LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


Class 


OUTLOOKS 


ON 


SOCIETY,   LITERATURE 


AND     POLITICS 


BY 


EDWIN    PERCY    WHIFFLE 


BOSTON 
TICKNOR    AND     COMPANY 

211  OLxmont 
1888 


Copyright,  1888, 

BY   TlCKNOR   AND   COMPANY. 


All  rights  reserved. 


Smbrrsitg  Prrss: 
JOHN  WILSON  AND  SON,  CAMBRIDGE. 


O-i 


CONTENTS. 


PACK 

PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS 1 

A  GRAND  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL  ....  25 
MR.  HARDHACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION  OP  MAN  FROM  THE 

MONKEY 47 

MR.  HARDHACK  ON  THE  SENSATIONAL  IN  LITERATURE  AND 

LIFE 63 

THE  SWEARING  HABIT 75 

DOMESTIC  SERVICE 99 

RELIGION  AND  SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES 117 

AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES 127 

SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES,  DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS  150 

THE  NEW  OPPOSITION  PARTY 186 

THE  CAUSES  OF  FOREIGN  ENMITY  TO  THE  UNITED  STATES  196 

RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE 207 

THE  JOHNSON  PARTY 231 

THE  PRESIDENT  AND  ms  ACCOMPLICES 249 

THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON 273 

MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH  .  .  287 

"LORD"  BACON 300 

LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER 306 

IN  DICKENS-LAND 314 


236364 


OUTLOOKS 


ON 


SOCIETY,    LITERATURE, 

AND    POLITICS. 


PANICS    AND  INVESTMENTS. 

THE  financial  storm  which  of  late  swept  so  piti 
lessly  over  the  commercial  world  has,  like  all  other 
calamities,  produced  reflection  in  producing  ruin. 
Amidst  the  wreck  of  their  property  men  began  to 
meditate  upon  the  laws  of  trade,  and  if  they  could 
not  pay  their  creditors,  they  were  at  least  singularly 
fruitful  in  reasons  why  such  payment  was  impossible. 
A  note  of  hand  falling  due  at  a  certain  day  was  the 
occasion,  not  of  the  disbursement  of  money,  but  of 
profound  speculations  on  the  complications  of  the 
Currency  Question  and  the  fluctuations  of  values. 
Merchants  became  political  economists,  not  when 
their  obligations  were  incurred,  but  when  they  ma 
tured;  and  the  connection  between  debtor  and  cred 
itor  assumed  the  character  of  an  edifying  interchange 
of  philosophic  thought,  in  which  they  were  mutually 
improved,  instead  of  being  a  cold  and  harsh  relation 

1 


2  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

of  profit  and  loss.  As  nearly  all  creditors  were  like 
wise  debtors,  arid  as  nearly  all  debtors  were  like 
wise  creditors,  the  transition  from  mercenary  to  medi 
tative  relations  between  men  of  business  was  effected 
without  that  profuse  expenditure  of  profane  language 
which  in  ordinary  times  vulgarizes  the  passage  from 
facts  to  ideas.  It  was  seen  that  to  take  legal  means  to . 
enforce  the  payment  of  debts  would  be  simply  to  trans 
fer  the  property  that  remained  —  if  such  a  thing  as 
property  really  existed  —  into  the  hands  of  lawyers,  and 
as  law  is  made  by  mutual  assent,  it  was  by  mutual 
assent  suspended.  Meanwhile  all  the  ethical  and 
theological  maxims  relating  to  the  evanescent  nature 
of  worldly  goods  were  hunted  out  from  the  innermost 
recesses  of  memory,  brightened  into  epigrams,  and 
tossed  about  as  good  jokes  from  the  banker  who  could 
not  pay  his  bills  to  the  merchant  who  could  not  pay 
his  banker.  "  Base  is  the  slave  who  pays  !  "  was  no 
longer  a  rhetorical  flourish  of  Ancient  Pistol,  but  a 
settled  principle  of  modern  finance.  Property,  deified 
but  a  short  time  before,  was  now  a  broken  and  pros 
trate  idol.  From  being  the  one  solid  and  permanent 
thing  in  the  universe,  it  became  the  most  visionary 
and  elusive  of  all  objects  of  contemplation.  It  was 
ten  thousand  millions  of  dollars  a  month  ago,  —  riant, 
exulting,  glorying  in  its  strength, —  and  now  it  hid  its 
face  in  shame  before  the  abhorred  spectacle  of  debt. 
The  feeling  of  poverty  shivered  in  every  heart ;  and 
no  person,  in  the  scepticism  provoked  by  the  tum 
bling  of  values,  had  the  impudence  to  call  himself  rich. 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  3 

Wealth,  indeed,  was  an  obsolete  idea.  Men  eyed 
their  debts  with  a  comical  horror,  and  the  shrivelled 
assets  for  which  the  debts  were  incurred,  with  a  comi 
cal  contempt.  The  real  sufferers  and  grumblers 
were  those  capitalists  who  had  lent  but  had  not  bor 
rowed  ;  and  it  was  but  natural  that  disappointed  greed 
should  prevent  them  from  viewing  the  matter  in  its 
wider  relations  and  higher  philosophical  aspects.  The 
fabric  of  our  splendid  prosperity  rested,  in  a  great 
degree,  on  credit.  This,  argued  the  debtor  class, 
ought  to  have  been  known  by  those  who  supplied  the 
credit.  But  credit,  as  Mirabeau  says,  is  "  Suspicion 
asleep"  One  fine  autumnal  day  the  fiend  woke  up ; 
confidence  fled  at  his  first  withering  glance ;  each 
man  believed  at  once  in  universal  depravity,  with  but 
one  honorable  exception  —  himself ;  and  persons  re 
puted  wise  and  cautious  but  a  day  before,  forthwith 
acted  in. the  spirit  of  those  Hibernian  thinkers  on 
currency  who,  in  their  rage  against  a  Dublin  banker, 
could  hit  upon  no  more  felicitous  method  of  wreaking 
their  wrath  than  by  burning  all  his  bills  they  could 
find  in  circulation.  If  the  crisis  was  produced  by 
recklessness,  it  was  met  by  timidity  and  folly.  In 
deed,  one  of  the  most  mortifying  characteristics  of  a 
panic  is  the  feebleness  of  thought  and  nervelessness 
of  will  it  reveals  in  those  respectable  mediocrities  who 
occupy  the  summit  of  financial  society,  and  who  con 
vert  the  storm  into  a  hurricane  by  refusing  to  face  it 
resolutely  from  the  first. 

In  regard  to  the  causes  of  what  in  after  years  will 


4  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

be  known  as  The  Great  Panic,  it  seems  to  us  that 
those  which  have  been  explored  by  the  economist  are 
merely  subsidiary  to  those  which  force  themselves 
upon  the  attention  of  the  moralist.  The  laws  of 
trade  were  doubtless  violated;  but  the  violation  of  the 
laws  of  trade  was  preceded  by  a  violation  of  the  laws 
of  mind  and  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  conscience. 
Political  economy,  in  its  appeals  to  the  industrial  and 
commercial  classes,  proceeds  on  the  ground  that  self 
ishness  may  be  intelligent,  and  avarice  judicious  ;  but 
selfishness  and  avarice  have  an  instinctive  antipathy 
to  the  general  principles  which  promote  self-interest 
by  cooling  the  fever  of  its  desires,  by  bringing  its 
wishes  into  some  harmony  with  its  capacities,  and  by 
showing  the  limitations  which  reason  imposes  on  its 
greed.  The  month  which  witnessed  the  anarchy  and 
chaos  of  our  industrial  system  found  us  plentifully 
gifted  with  selfishness  and  avarice,  but  found  us  defi- 
.  cient  in  the  power  of  intelligent  action.  The  charac 
teristic  of  real  intelligence  is  the  capacity  to  discern 
objective  facts  and  laws ;  but  intelligence  must  feel 
•the  pressure  of  some  moral  impulse,  in  order  to  es 
cape  from  the  self-delusions  which  obstruct  the  clear 
view  of  objects  which  are  independent  of  self.  "Poe 
try,"  says  Lord  Bacon,  "  accommodates  the  shows  of 
things  to  the  desires  of  the  mind ; "  and  certainly  in 
this  sense  we  could  have  boasted  many  poets  among 
our  men  of  industrial  enterprise,  had  the  "  desires " 
been  as  poetical  as  the  "accommodation"  of  facts  was 
complete. 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  5 

Some  thinkers  on  the  subject  find  consolation  in 
the  thought  that  there  has  been  no  absolute  destruc 
tion  of  wealth  by  the  panic,  but  only  a  downfall  of 
values.     The  injury  to  individuals,  however,  has  been 
the  same  as  if  wealth,  and  not  values,  had  been  de 
stroyed.     A  government  which  should  violently  take 
the  property  of  some  portions  of  the  community  and 
transfer  it  to  other  portions,  would  not  destroy  any  of 
the  wealth  of  that  community,  though  such  an  act 
of  monstrous  wrong  would  justify  a  revolution.     The 
practical  result  of  our  commercial  revulsion  has  been 
a  wholesale  confiscation  of  property,  which,  had  it 
been  done  by  the  Government,  would  have  led  to  civil 
war;  for  it  is  not  so  much  the  characteristic  of  a 
good  government  that  it  protects  the  property  of  a 
nation,  as  that  it  protects  the  property  of  a  nation  by 
protecting  its  individual  possessors.     It  is  frightful  to 
think  of  the  number  of  individuals  who  have  seen  the 
hard  earnings  of  a  life  of  labor  melt  and  mysteriously 
disappear  in   a  single   day,   under  the  operation   of 
merciless  laws  which  avenged  on  the  whole  commu 
nity  the  disregard  of  their  monitions  and  menaces  by 
the  improvident,  ignorant,  and  knavish  portion  of  it. 
The  average  honesty  and  intelligence  of  the  country 
is  also  satirized  in  the  indifference  with  which  this 
individual  spoliation  is  commonly  regarded.     In  situ 
ations  of  financial  responsibility,  incompetency  is  a 
moral  offence,  and  its  good  intentions  are  proverbially 
the  pavement  of  hell :  the  wrong  man  in  the  right 
place  is  the  plague  and  curse  of  modern  society ;  but 


6  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

when  recklessness  and  greed  are  united  with  incom- 
petency,  the  wholesome  wrath  of  all  good  men  should 
be  roused  against  the  monstrous  combination.  Yet 
every  panic  in  the  money  market  is  a  revelation  of 
presumptuous  folly  wielding  and  wasting  the  fortunes 
of  credulous  and  trusting  prudence.  Wholesale  rob 
beries,  which  no  professional  thief  would  ever  have 
the  opportunities  of  perpetrating,  are  ranked  among 
the  necessary  incidents  and  risks  of  capital  invested 
in  corporations.  Haydon,  the  painter,  tells  us  that 
in  one  of  his  many  Micawber-like  financial  entangle 
ments  he  applied  to  Coutts,  the  rich  banker,  for  a 
loan  of  four  hundred  pounds.  The  banker,  though 
he  seems  to  have  apprehended  that  the  investment 
would  be  a  permanent  one,  gratified  the  martyr  of 
debt  and  "  high  art "  by  graciously  assenting  to  his 
request.  As  the  painter  was  leaving  the  house,  he 
noticed  the  footman  spurning  from  the  door  a  pauper 
who  came  to  beg  for  bread.  The  supplicant  for  four 
hundred  pounds  was  received  as  a  distinguished  vis 
itor  by  the  master  of  the  house,  in  the  gilded  parlor ; 
the  supplicant  for  a  penny  was  hooted  by  the  master's 
flunky  from  the  door-step  into  the  street.  This  is  the 
type  of  the  American  mode  of  dealing  with  big  and 
little  thieves. 

There  are  some  persons  who  think  that  the  rascali 
ties  and  follies  of  our  business  are  referable  to  our 
paper  currency,  —  especially  to  bank-bills  of  low  de 
nominations.  In  answer  to  this  it  might  be  said  that 
in  Hamburg,  where  they  have  a  specie  currency,  in 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  7 

England,  where  they  have  no  bank-bills  under  five 
pounds,  some  of  the  worst  abuses  of  the  credit 
system  have  been  developed.  The  most  superficial 
examination  of  our  own  credit  system  will  prove  that 
bank-bills  form  but  a  small  portion  of  it.  We  have 
lately  seen  a  careful  estimate  of  the  losses  by  the  fail 
ures  in  the  United  States  since  the  month  of  Septem 
ber,  and  the  amount  is  considerably  larger  than  the 
whole  paper  currency  of  the  country.  It  is,  indeed, 
but  natural  that  men  and  corporations  should  issue 
bills  payable  on  demand  with  more  caution  than  bills 
payable  in  six  or  nine  months.  We  doubt  if  ex 
cessive  credits  are  produced  by  a  paper  currency,  or 
could  be  prevented  by  a  gold  currency.  We  doubt  if 
any  law  could  be  framed  which  would  meet  the  evils 
and  abuses  of  the  credit  system.  As  long  as  capital 
ists  think  they  can  make  their  capital  remunerative 
and  reproductive  by  giving  credits,  as  long  as  bor 
rowers  think  they  can  use  capital  profitably,  so 
long  will  credits  be  given  and  received.  The  moment 
that  capital  becomes  redundant  new  enterprises  start 
up,  more  than  sufficient  to  absorb  it,  and  the  bril 
liancy  of  their  pretensions  blinds  avarice  to  their 
folly. 

A  person  once  asked  Home  Tooke,  the  celebrated 
writer  of  political  libels,  how  far  a  man  could  libel 
the  Government  and  escape  being  hanged.  "  I  have 
passed  my  life,"  replied  Tooke, "  in  trying  to  find  that 
out."  So  each  man  of  business,  in  our  country,  seems 
to  learn  political  economy,  not  through  Adam  Smith 


8  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

and  Mill,  but  through  experience  of  protested  notes 
and  ruinous  speculations ;  and  economic  principles 
of  the  most  elementary  character  are  frequently  pur 
chased  at  the  expense  of  whole  fortunes.  It  costs 
'some  men  a  hundred  thousand  dollars  to  learn  the 
relations  which  subsist  between  supply  and  demand. 
Indeed,  principles  level  to  trade  are  clearly  perceived 
only  by  minds  which  survey  them  from  a  higher  level. 
Pure  selfishness  never  generalizes.  Its  guiding  idea 
is  best  expressed  in  the  imperfect  English  of  the 
French  coxcomb,  "  Every  man  for  myself." 

We  therefore  are  reluctantly  compelled  to  believe 
that  the  notorious  abuses  of  our  credit  system,  the 
frightful  commercial  revulsions  they  occasion,  and  the 
agrarian  laws  they  practically  inaugurate,  will  con 
tinue  to  afflict  the  country  as  long  as  so  much  absurd 
and  mischievous  importance  is  attached  to  the  idea  of 
wealth,  and  as  long  as  it  is  pursued  with  such  raven 
ous  intensity.  The  desire  of  wealth  is  the  dominant 
desire  of  the  larger  portion  of  our  population,  —  a  de 
sire  not  so  much  to  create  wealth  by  industrial  genius 
as  to  get  it  by  speculative  ingenuity.  The  morbid 
phenomena  presented  in  our  world  of  business  only 
embody  in  palpable  facts  qualities  of  our  national  char 
acter.  The  intellect  of  the  country  is  under  the  domin 
ion  of  a  low  order  of  motives,  which  prevent  it  from 
exercising  the  higher  functions  of  intellect.  Smart 
men  push  themselves  into  the  places  of  able  men ;  and 
their  only  notion  of  progress  is  speed  which  trusts  in 
luck,  with  no  discernment  of  paths,  and  no  foresight 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  9 

of  the  goal.  Now,  business  cannot  be  honestly  and 
intelligently  conducted  when  it  is  conducted  under 
the  simple  impulse  of  getting  money  at  any  rate. 
That  honesty  is  the  best  policy  is  a  principle  too  large 
and  general  to  influence  the  bargain  or  speculation  of 
the  hour;  and  so  flashy  and  superficial  is  much  of  the 
mind  engaged  in  trade,  that  it  lacks  thought  sharply 
to  discriminate  between  acuteness  and  knavery,  a 
wise  reticence  and  direct  falsehood.  Half  of  the  light 
and  airy  swindlers  whose  schemes  of  business  rapine 
end  in  failure  are  unconscious  of  the  true  nature  of 
their  misdeeds,  and  are  really  surprised  at  the  hard 
names  sputtered  out  by  the  gruff  honesty  of  the  old 
fogies  of  commerce  when  their  equivocal  modes  of 
obtaining  money  are  brought  to  light.  At  the  worst, 
they  probably  conceived  their  creditors  would  in 
dulge  in  language  no  harsher  than  that  in  which  little 
Isaac,  in  "  The  Duenna,"  chuckles  over  his  sharp 
practice:  "Roguish,  perhaps,  but  keen  —  devilish 
keen ! " 

And  if  wealth  and  poverty  are  respectively  the 
heaven  and  hell  of  our  concrete  religion,  why  wonder 
that  men  will  do  anything  to  obtain  the  one  and 
escape  from  the  other  ?  "  Worth  makes  the  man," 
says  a  character  in  one  of  Bulwer's  plays ;  "  and  the 
more  a  man  is  worth  the  worthier  he  is."  Sydney 
Smitli  once  declared  that  in  England  "  poverty  is  in 
famous  ; "  and  in  the  United  States,  where  man  was 
supposed  to  have  achieved  some  victory  "over  his 
accidents,"  the  accident  of  property  domineers  in  the 


10  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

public  mind  over  the  substance  of  mind  and  virtue. 
To  be  poor  is  to  be  a  "  poor  devil."  It  is  pathetic  to 
observe  the  moral  prostration  of  our  free  and  inde 
pendent  citizens  before  some  affluent  boor  or  well- 
invested  booby ;  or  to  watch  the  complacent  simper 
that  comes  over  the  face  of  scornful  beauty  as  she 
listens  to  the  imbecilities  chattered  by  some  weak 
stripling  of  fortune  who  presents  to  the  eye  of  science 
nothing  but  "  a  watery  smile  and  educated  whisker." 
These  follies  proceed  from  no  respect  for  what  the 
rich  are,  but  from  a  worship  of  what  they  possess. 
Indeed,  the  worship  of  the  wealth  is  often  combined 
with  a  secret  contempt,  hatred,  or  envy,  of  the  posses 
sor.  Property  makes  a  distinction  between  man  and 
man  as  arbitrary  and  artificial  as  aristocratic  privi 
lege  ;  and  our  people  feel  that  the  doctrine  of  equality 
—  the  doctrine  that  one  man  is  as  good  as  another  — 
can  only  be  realized  by  striving  to  make  one  man  as 
rich  as  another.  For  one  person  who  pursues  wealth 
as  an  end,  from  the  impulse  of  avarice,  there  are 
hundreds  who  pursue  it  as  a  means,  from  the  im 
pulses  of  vanity,  sensuality,  egotism,  and  the  desire 
to  make  a  good  appearance.  If  the  capitalist  asserts 
himself  socially  as  an  aristocrat,  the  democrat  trades 
recklessly  on  what  he  borrows  from  the  capitalist  in 
order  to  be  as  good  an  aristocrat  as  he.  A  few  afflu 
ent  families,  composed  miscellaneously  of  millionnaires 
vulgar  and  millionnaires  refined,  of  millionnaires  intel 
ligent  and  millionnaires  stupid,  combine  together,  and 
impudently  attempt  to  confine  the  meaning  of  "  good 


PANICS  AND   INVESTMENTS.  11 

society  "  to  the  possession  of  a  splendid  establishment 
in  a  fashionable  street,  with  a  large  income  to  support 
it ;  and  it  is  curious  to  see  with  what  ludicrous  sim 
plicity  their  pretensions  are  admitted,  and  with  what 
wear  and   tear  of  brain  and  conscience,  with   what 
sacrifices  of   health,  comfort,  and  honor,  thousands 
aim  to  qualify  themselves  for  entrance  into  that  ter 
restrial   paradise.     Under   this   system   the   style   of 
living  quickly  becomes  of  more  importance  than  the 
pleasure  of  living  or  the  object  of  living.     Life  means 
the  appearances  of  life.     It  means  houses,  equipages, 
dress,  dinners,  a  crowd  of  servants,  reception  into  the 
awful  company  of  fops  and  belles,  —  everything  but 
human  souls.     A  higher  life —  slightly  changed  from 
the  definition  of  the  idealist  —  means  a  life  exalted 
from  West  Broadway  to  the  Fifth  Avenue.     Without 
ten  thousand  a  year  it  is  impossible  to  be  and  know 
ladies  and  gentlemen.     Existence  is  fretted  away  in 
desperate  attempts  to  make  it  splendid,  conspicuous, 
and  uncomfortable  ;  and  after  the  object  is  reached,  it 
is  found  to  be  a  stupendous  imposture.     As  regards 
any  satisfaction  in  life,  it  is  much  better  to  adopt  the 
theory  of  that  unsophisticated  mechanic  who  asserted 
that  he  was  as  rich  as  the  richest  man  in  town,  and 
supported   his   assertion   by  this  train  of  argument. 
The  rich  man,  he  said,  had  only  what  he  wanted,  and 
he  had  the  same.     In  regard  to  luxuries,  he  doubted 
if  the  rich  man  could  claim  any  superiority ;  "  for  at 
his  house  they  had  doughnuts  for  dinner  every  day, 
whether  they  had  company  or  not."     The   ideal   of 


12  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

good  living  may  not  have  been  high,  but  there  was 
something  sublime  in  the  content. 

Now  one  great  result  of  such  a  panic  as  we  have 
lately  witnessed  is,  that  it  disenchants  the  mind  of 
the  illusions  created  by  the  hope  of  wealth,  and  the 
vanities  created  by  the  ambition  for  social  position. 
People,  at  least  sensible  people,  learn  what  substances 
they  are  and  what  "  shadows  they  pursue."     Events 
preach  to   them   truths   which   the   most   persuasive 
preachers  would  fail  to  convey.     And  among  these 
truths  there  is  none  more  important,  or  more  fertile 
of  sobering  reflections,  than  the  truth  that  what  a 
man  invests  in  trade  and  industry,  in  railroads  and 
manufactures,  is  not  merely  his  labor,  or  talent,  or 
money,  but  himself;    and  that  property,  resting  as 
it  does  on  a  deceitful  basis  of  fluctuating  values,  is 
among  the  least  solid  and  permanent  of  all  the  things 
in  which  a  man  can  invest  himself.     This  proposition 
would   have   been  scouted  as  transcendental  a  year 
ago  ;  but  within  a  few  months  the  most  practical  of 
men  have  been  compelled  to  admit  that  wealth,  with 
all  its  bullying  solidity  of  appearance,  has  proved  the 
most  visionary,  elusive,  and  transcendental  of  abstrac 
tions.     The  idealists  have  convicted  the  materialists 
of  mistaking  the  shifting  sand  for  the  immovable  rock, 
and  it  is  now  their  turn  to  dogmatize  from  the  throne 
of  common  sense.     Facts  have  demonstrated  two  of 
their  propositions,  which  are  most  repugnant  to  self 
ishness  and  evident  to  reason :  first,  that  the  commer 
cial  world  being  a  unit,  shocks  in  one  quarter  are  felt 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  13 

in  all  quarters,  and  that  the  whole  body  is  made  to 
suffer  for  the  stupidities  and  rascalities  of  any  of  its 
individual  members  ;  second,  that  the  good  of  all  is 
bound  up  in  the  real  good  of  each ;  and  now,  after 
thus  indicating  the  identity  of  individual  interests 
with  the  general  interest,  and  placed  political  economy 
on  its  true  foundation  in  the  Christian  religion,  the 
idealists  can  further  show  the  perfect  practical  sa 
gacity  of  their  great  principle,  that  material  posses 
sions  lack  all  the  elements  of  permanency,  certainty, 
and  satisfying  content  which  inhere  in  spiritual 
possessions. 

We  think  the  most  rapid  and  superficial  survey  of 
the  things  in  which  men  invest,  and  in  which  they  are 
invested,  will  prove  the  proposition.  In  regard  to  the 
darling  object  to  which  American  energy  and  intelli 
gence  are  directed,  the  obtaining  of  property  and  social 
station,  we  have  already  shown  its  transitory  and  vis 
ionary  character.  All  of  us  have  seen  men  go  up 
and  down  with  Erie  and  Michigan  Southern,  with 
Cumberland  Coal  and  Cotton,  until  the  doubt  insinu 
ated  itself  whether  they  were  not  mere  phantasms  to 
which  stocks  and  stones  gave  all  the  appearance 
of  reality  they  possessed.  Soul,  manhood,  vitality, 
dropped  out  of  them  as  Erie  fell  twenty  per  cent,  or 
Cotton  tumbled  from  its  proud  eminence  of  price  and 
place.  This  fact  shows  that  while  these  men  were 
cunningly  investing  in  Erie  and  Cotton,  Erie  and 
Cotton  were  far  more  cunningly  investing  in  them. 
To  say  that  they  became  bankrupt  is  not  to  express 


14  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

the  whole  tragedy  of  their  lives.  In  the  pursuit  of 
material  objects  they  were  insensibly  building  up  their 
characters,  and  becoming  what  they  pursued.  Men 
tally  and  morally  they  were  "  breeding  in  and  in  " 
with  the  transactions  of  their  business.  When  they 
failed,  their  bankruptcy  was  not  merely  a  bankruptcy 
of  the  purse  but  a  bankruptcy  of  nature.  Their  souls 
were  insolvent.  They  consented  to  be  nothing  in 
themselves  in  order  to  be  everything  by  the  grace  of 
the  objects  in  which  they  dealt ;  and  when  these  last 
proved  deceptions  they  literally  had  nothing  they 
could  call  their  own.  Wall  Street  bowed  before  them 
for  the  wealth  which  was  in  them.  When  the  wealth 
vanished,  neither  civility  nor  servility  could  detect 
anything  in  what  was  left  to  repay  the  trouble  of  a 
nod  or  a  cringe.  Fifth  Avenue  made  them  members 
of  its  society  for  their  establishments.  When  these 
came  under  the  auctioneer's  hammer,  no  social  quali 
ties  were  left  which  ugood  company,"  even  by  the 
aid  of  a  microscope,  could  recognize.  The  universe, 
it  is  true,  was  still  full  of  objects  which  wealth  could 
neither  purchase  nor  take  away;  but  in  them  our 
ruined  millionnaires  had  never  thought  of  investing 
any  portion  of  their  souls.  We  might  have  pardoned 
their  venturing  their  whole  fortunes  in  two  or  three 
securities;  but  it  is  difficult  to  tolerate  their  venturing 
also  in  them  their  whole  natures,  with  a  like  oversight 
of  the  prudence  which  keeps  on  the  safe  side  of  the 
world's  chances  by  a  wise  distribution  of  its  resources. 
When  we  contrast  the  attitude  of  resolute  scorn  which 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  15 

these  men  formerly  assumed  toward  the  highest  ob 
jects  of  human  concern  with  their  present  forlorn 
aspect,  we  can  but  murmur  pathetically,  "  0  Bottom  ! 
how  art  thou  invested  !  " 

But  investments  of  the  kind  we  are  now  considering, 
namely,  investments  of  human  nature,  are  not  merely 
made  in  property  :  they  are  also  made  in  politics  and 
party  ;  and  when  made  in  politics  and  party,  they  rest 
on  a  foundation  as  insecure,  and  are  liable  to  end  in 
bankruptcies  as  fatal,  as  when  made  in  business.     In 
vestment  of  the  soul  in  politics  is  often  investment  in 
the  changing  caprice  of  the  hour,  —  in  rage,  envy,  ha 
tred,  disappointed  ambition,  in  lies,  heartache,  hypoc 
risy,  and  self-deception.     The  man  is  possessed  by  the 
delusions  and  passions,  instead  of  possessing  the  reali 
ties,  of  political  power.     Even  if  he  be  so  fortunate  as 
to  obtain  an  office,  he  finds  that  he  has  to  undergo  a 
larger  amount  of  vituperation  for  a  smaller  amount 
of  money  than  the  holder  of  any  other  kind  of  office. 
No  president  of  a  railroad  or  manufacturing  company 
would  consent,  for  ten  thousand  a  year,  to  be  the  sub 
ject  of  so  much  public  abuse  as  is  lavished  on  many  a 
postmaster  whose  salary  is  hardly  a  thousand  a  year. 
Few  voters  will  take  the  trouble  to  perform  the  neces 
sary  business  of  a  political  organization,  but  they  are 
all  willing  to  indulge  in  more  or  less  contempt  for 
those  who  do,  —  for  those  who  do  the  "dirty  work," 
as  they  are  too  fond  of  calling  the  work  which  is  done 
for  their  profit  and  success.     There  is  enough  sym 
pathy  for  broken-down  merchants,  but  who  has  any 


16  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

sympathy  for  a  broken-down  politician  ?  The  orange 
is  thoroughly  squeezed;  who  heeds  the  peel  that  is 
cast  into  the  street  ? 

It  may  also  be  doubted  if  the  investment  of  the 
brain  in  partisan  catchwords  and  declamation  is  a 
judicious  investment  of  the  mental  powers.  No  more 
efficacious  mode  of  dissipating  the  mind  from  a  force 
into  a  vaporous  phantom  has  ever  been  devised  than 
the  mode  of  cramming  the  minds  of  the  young  with 
political  phrases,  and  then  irritating  their  sensibilities 
to  that  pitch  of  enthusiasm  which  urges  them  to 
"utter  all  themselves  into  the  air."  The  tendency 
of  such  speechifying  is  to  make  the  mind  incapable  of 
observing  a  fact,  analyzing  a  combination,  grasping  a 
principle,  or  thinking  closely,  accurately,  and  con 
secutively  upon  any  subject.  The  vagabond  thoughts 
and  shreds  of  thought,  decked  out  in  faded  finery 
selected  from  the  "  old  clo' "  of  eloquence,  reel  from 
the  orator's  lips  in  jubilant  defiance  of  order  and  se 
quence.  Or,  to  change  the  figure,  the  brain  is  inflated 
to  that  extent  which  justifies  the  hope  that  the  defects 
of  a  logic  of  wind  will  be  overlooked  in  a  rhetoric  of 
whirlwind,  and  that  the  absence  of  ideas  will  hardly 
be  noted  in  the  terrific  clatter  of  words.  Such  are 
the  characteristics  of  many  of  those  astonishing  dis 
plays  of  juvenile  political  eloquence,  which  should  be 
witnessed,  not  by  citizens  desirous  of  obtaining  some 
facts  and  principles  to  guide  them  in  voting  sensibly 
and  honestly,  but  by  an  audience  composed  of  ladies 
whose  lips  are  engaged  in  dissolving  the  organized 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  17 

perfume  of  peppermints,  and  gentlemen  whose  teeth 
are  busy  in  penetrating  into  those  appetizing  "Aids 
to  Reflection  "  which  lie  hid  in  the  shell  of  the  peanut. 
It  is  next  to  impossible  ever  to  reclaim  a  young  man 
who  has  once  accustomed  his  mind  to  think  vagrantly 
in  order  that  he  may  spout  "  eloquently."  But  we 
still  may  be  permitted  to  hope  that  every  young  person 
who  has  made  a  foolish  speech,  and  been  applauded 
therefor  by  his  party,  will  consent,  for  his  own  good, 
to  abandon  his  intention  of  being  President  of  the 
United  States.  That  his  qualifications  for  the  office 
are  undoubted,  the  peculiar  style  of  his  eloquence 
abundantly  proves ;  but  we  would  respectfully  suggest 
to  him  the  remote  chance  that  some  three  or  four 
millions  of  his  countrymen  may  not  be  sufficiently 
familiar  with  his  claims  to  select  him  for  the  post. 

In  regard  to  all  the  lower  forms  of  politics,  we 
much  doubt  the  wisdom  of  the  man  who  invests  his 
nature  in  their  perilous  chances  and  changes.  But 
politics  have  their  higher  ambitions  and  more  splendid 
rewards,  —  those  which  inflame  the  passions  and  stim 
ulate  the  intellect  of  the  statesman.  Even  here  it  is 
dangerous  to  invest  in  anything  lower  than  patriotism ; 
for  patriotism  affords  the  only  real  compensations  for 
that  "  laborious,  invidious,  closely-watched  slavery 
which  is  mocked  with  the  name  of  Power."  It  is  the 
misfortune  of  the  United  States  that  few  of  our  emi 
nent  statesmen  can  be  content  to  serve  their  country 
and  gain  an  honorable  fame  in  those  situations  which, 
though  really  of  the  first,  are  seemingly  of  secondary 

2 


18  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

importance.  As  Representatives  and  Senators,  the 
clear  perception  of  their  duties  is  disturbed  by  a  bea 
tific  vision  of  the  Presidential  Chair.  This  magnifi 
cent  delusion,  created  by  a  visionary  hope,  is  too  often 
the  bauble  in  which  they  invest  their  hearts  and  souls. 
Disappointed  in  that,  they  are  stripped  of  all  that 
makes  life  worth  living.  Now,  for  the  real  purposes 
of  ambition  and  patriotism,  the  office  of  Senator  is  a 
nobler  one  than  the  office  of  President ;  and  a  Senator 
is  certain  to  be  an  honester,  wiser,  and  braver  man, 
more  likely  to  prove  himself  qualified  for  the  Presi 
dency,  provided  the  hope  of  being  President  has  not 
warped  his  convictions  and  complicated  his  patriotism 
with  intrigue.  But  rub  off  the  varnish  which  gives 
such  a  mischievous  shine  to  the  White  House,  and  to 
the  eye  of  reason  the  office  of  President  has  little  in 
it  to  inflame  an  honorable  ambition.  Events  daily 
tend  to  make  the  President  little  more  than  the  Dis 
tributor-General  of  the  spoils  of  office ;  and  for  every 
office  he  gives,  he  turns  ten  sycophants  into  nine 
personal  enemies  and  one  lukewarm  friend.  Lord 
Brougham,  in  a  passage  black  with  bile,  but  which 
should  be  deeply  meditated  by  every  aspirant  for 
executive  office,  has  shown  what  a  charming  and  dig 
nified  occupation  that  is  which  attempts  to  feed  the 
hunger  for  place.  Writing  from  his  own  experience 
of  office-hunters,  he  says  that  "  no  one  who  has  long 
been  the  dispenser  of  patronage  among  large  bodies 
of  his  fellow-citizens  can  fail  to  see  infinitely  more 
numerous  instances  of  sordid,  selfish,  greedy,  ungrate- 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  19 

ful  conduct,  than  of  the  virtues  to  which  such  hateful 
qualities  stand  opposed.     Daily  examples  come  before 
him  of  the  most  unfeeling  acrimony  toward  competi 
tors,  the  most  far-fetched  squeamish  jealousy  of  con 
flicting   claims ;    unblushing    falsehood    in    both   its 
branches,  boasting  and  detraction ;  grasping  selfish 
ness  in  both  kinds,  greedy  pursuit  of  men's  own  bread 
and   cold  calculating  on  others'  blood ;   the  fury  of 
disappointment  when  that  has  not  been  done  which 
it  was  impossible  to  do ;    swift   oblivion  of   all  that 
has  been  granted ;  unreasonable  expectation  of  more 
only  because  much  has  been  given ;  not  seldom  fa 
vors  repaid  with  hatred  and  ill-treatment,  as  if  by  this 
unnatural  course  the  account  might  be  settled  between 
gratitude  and  pride,  —  such  are  the  secrets  of  the  hu 
man  heart  which  power  soon  discloses  to  its  possessor: 
add  to  these  that  which,  however,  deceives  no  one, — 
the  never-ending  hypocrisy  of   declaring  that  what 
ever  is  most  eagerly  sought  is  only  coveted  as  afford 
ing  the  means  of  serving  the  country,  and  will  only 
be  taken  as   a  sacrifice  of  individual  interest  to  the 
sense  of  public  duty."     Now,  as  much  of  Brougham's 
patronage  as  Chancellor  was  ecclesiastical,  we  may 
charitably  suppose  that  our  ex-Presidents  could  testify, 
in  language  at  least  as  gloomy  and  bitter,  of  their  ex 
perience  of  unclerical  applicants.     Is  it  not  amazing 
that  any  sane  man,  who  could  pick  up  a  subsistence 
in  a  country  court,  or  even  on  the  highway,  should 
think  it  the  highest  of  earthly  honors  to  be  engaged 
in  this  business  of  dispensing  patronage  ? 


20  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

But  investments,  truly  considered,  are  made  in 
literature,  art,  science,  and  philosophy,  as  well  as  in 
business  and  politics  ;  and  when  made  in  beauty  and 
truth,  in  laws,  principles,  inventions,  ideals,  they  are 
among  the  most  permanent  and  essentially  real  and 
remunerative  of  all  investments  of  mind  and  charac 
ter  —  provided  always  that  the  motives  of  the  thinker 
are  on  a  level  with  the  subject-matter  of  his  thought. 
The  Swiss  who  sell  their  brains  are  of  no  higher 
rank  than  the  Swiss  who  sell  their  swords  ;  and  it 
is  doubtless  true  that  the  poet,  the  artist,  the  man  of 
science,  the  philosopher,  may  be  impelled  by  vanities, 
envies,  jealousies,  and  hatreds,  as  ignoble  as  any 
which  influence  the  action  of  the  knavish  trader  in 
money  or  the  knavish  trader  in  political  opinions  and 
interests  ;  but  when  the  search  for  truth  and  beauty 
is  inspired  by  a  genuine  love  of  truth  and  beauty, 
everything  that  is  gained  is  a  possession  forever. 
The  mind  is  in  harmonious  relations  with  the  great 
objective  facts  and  laws  it  was  created  to  discern, 
commune  with,  and  possess ;  and  whether  we  say 
that  the  mind  invests  in  them  or  they  invest  in  the 
mind,  the  result  is  equally  beneficent.  If  we  contrast 
a  broken  merchant  or  a  defeated  politician  with  a 
man  of  equal  intellect  who  has  invested  in  art  and 
science,  we  shall  see  at  once  the  difference  between 
the  property  that  panics  can  destroy  and  the  property 
that  panics  cannot  touch.  In  regard  to  the  joy,  the 
ecstasy,  even  the  solid,  practical  satisfaction,  which 
come  from  the  consciousness  of  intellectual  wealth, 


PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS.  21 

who  shall  have  the  impudence  to  compare  with  them 
the  delights  which  any  material  property  can  give  ? 
Who  shall  say  that  the  chuckle  of  Rothschild,  as  he 
makes  a  lucky  hit  in  the  three  per  cents,  represents 
a  tithe  of  the  inward  ecstasy  of  Agassiz,  as  his  con 
quering  intelligence  subjugates  to  his  science  some 
hitherto  rebellious  province  of  the  animal  kingdom  ? 
We  doubt  if  all  the  money  of  the  banker  could  pur 
chase  the  transport  that  the  naturalist  finds  even  in 
his  jelly-fishes. 

It  is  undoubtedly  true  that  many  amateurs  who 
have  mistaken  "  aspiration  for  inspiration,"  the  power 
of  enjoying  beauty  for  the  power  of  creating  beauty, 
the  faculty  of  apprehending  what  science  has  discov 
ered  for  scientific  genius,  may  have  found  that  the 
attempt  to  invest  their  natures  in  literature,  art,  and 
science  has  ended  in  mortification  and  disappoint 
ment, —  in  mental  bankruptcy  and  impossibility  to 
pay  the  debt  "  which  every  man  owes  to  his  profes 
sion."  This,  however,  comes  from  their  own  inability 
to  acquire  property  in  Nature,  and  not  from  the  in 
ability  of  Nature  to  confer  property  on  the  genius  that 
can  rightly  claim  it.  They  are  miserable,  not  because 
they  are  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  truth,  but  because, 
through  their  vanity,  they  are  pretenders  to  genius. 
They  might  have  profitably  invested  in  taste  and 
knowledge ;  they  failed  only  because  they  traded  be 
yond  their  capital,  and  attempted  to  introduce  into 
the  kingdoms  of  mind  the  worst  abuses  of  that  credit 
system  which  is  the  plague  of  the  world  of  business. 


^  1CS  AND   INVESTMENTS. 

Ami   this   briii  ;   the  consideration  of  those 

inrestmentf  which  are  not  only  the  most  solid  and 

-jg  in   them  if.  which  underlie  and  guide 

all   others  which   give  durable  satisfaction  to  human 

nature.     These  an:  inYestments  in  moral  principles. 

Property  jn   mora.l    principles   is  "  real  "   property,  in 
a  higher  sense  than  any  legal  sense  ;  but  these  prin 
ciples-  are  only  truly  possessed  when  they  are  organ 
ized  into  virtues,  and  then  they  are  good  for  both 
worlds.     Let  any  man  invest  himself  in  justice,  firm 
ness,   simplicity,   patience,  moderation,   truthfulness, 
disinterestedness,  charity,  and  he  will  quickly  reali/c 
the  truth  of  the  Chinese  proverb,  that  "  Virtues,  if 
they  do  not  give  talents,  supply  their   place  ;   while 
talents  neither  give  virtues  nor  supply  their  place." 
Virtues  act  on  the  intelligence  primarily  by  prompt- 
in"    (he  self-scrutiny  which  results  in  self-knowledge. 
Tin-  mi.iery  and  fret  of  life  proceed   from   immoderate 
de§iref«       Appetite,    passion,     egotism,    conceit,    run 
away    with    the    mind,    corrupt,    all     its    processes    of 
ll""i"lil,    and    doom    it    equally    to    ignorance    of    self 
:ill(|    ignorance  of   the  real   character  of   UK;  vicious  or 
flimsy  externals  of  life  for  which,  as  well  as  to  which, 
il.    madly    abandons    itself.      The    .sublime    thought   ill 
the  parable  Of  the  Prodi-;;)!    Son  is  compressed   in  the 
simple   words,   "  when    he  eame   to   himself,"  —  when 
exhaustion    of    all     the    pleasures    of    sensuality,    and 
exhauslion  of  all  ils  penalties,  had    brought  him    back 
l<)    l.be   awful    personality    lodged    in    his    breast,    from 
uhieh  be  had    been  violently  swept   in  (he  tumult  and 


TANU'S    AND    IV 

storm  of  his  riot,     hi  tho  same  way  men  h 
tho  revulsions  of  oilier  forms  of  self-abandonment 
from  commercial   panics,  from  mortified    political   am 
bition,  from  failures  in  achiexinu:  fame  in  tho  pursuits 
of  literature,  art.  ami   science,  from  all   forms  of  de 
bauch,  sensual,  selfish,  or  mental  —  what  is  intrinsic 
ami  Indestruotible  in  thomsolvos.     Kseapotl  f(>r  a  timo 
from  the  ivalitios  of  thoir  being,  ami   investing  their 
lilV  in  delusions,  tlio  porioil  inovitably  oomos  \vhon 
ihi4v   an4  oompolKnl   <o  confront  (ho   ivbukinuj  spirit, 
within,  and   stand   convict  oil  of  folly   as  uoll   as  sin. 
Tlio  virtues  nro  then  remorsefully  roco«j;ni/i»(l  as  tho 
only    snro   possessions.      It   is   scon   that,   these  toao.h 
eeoiioiuie  principloa,  and  givo  to  business  nil  it  luus  of 
permanency  by  giving  to   it  all  it  has  of  honesty,      h 
is  seen  that  tho.so  tuko  Hellish  ambition  out  of  polities, 
and   keep  Slates  alivo  by  patriotism.     It  is  seen  that 
these  lift  the  sentiments  of  tho  man  of  loiters  and  tho 
man  of  sriruee  to  (he  level  of  tho  beauty  tho  imagina 
tion  aims  lo  embody,  and  tho  truth  tho  intolloot  seeks 
to  discOV6F<      It   is  seen,  in   short,,  thud   tho   peculiar 
combination    ,,!'    \irlnrs   which    is    called    integrity    in 
the  source  of  (lie  peculiar  combination  of   faculties  WO 
call    wisdom.      And    it    is    (his    (.horoiiyh    inlr-rily    of 
ttatlirc,  which    implies    mle";rity    in    bu:;ine:; :;,  mlr-i  il  \ 
in  aJ'l'airs  of   ;;lal<-,  inlev;rily  in  i.cntimenl,  und<  i  ;.l  and 
in",    raaSOn,    and    ima/malion,        it   [|    I  his    which     I'M 
(!Spec,ially   ne«-di-(l    in    an  a-<>    |||,,-    our::,  ffhOM  :i''livilv 
and    inli-lli-M  nrc    run  ^o   furiously  in    tin;  <lirer|.ion    of 
industrial    aud    commercial    occupa.tionii    thai,   notlmi" 


24  PANICS  AND  INVESTMENTS. 

less  than  the  austerest  ethics  can  overcome  the  fright 
ful  temptations  to  excess  or  to  fraud  by  which  those 
occupations  are  beset ;  and  we  trust  that  the  country 
will  not  be  compelled  to  learn  through  a  series  of 
regularly  recurring  panics,  that  virtues,  ideal  in  their 
spiritual  essence  and  power,  but  tremendously  actual 
in  the  consequences  which  follow  their  violation,  are 
in  their  immense  utility  the  most  practical  of  all 
things,  though  they  may  draw  their  vitality  from  in 
visible  fountains  of  influence,  and  refer  to  motives 
of  action  which  self-styled  practical  men  are  wont 
to  deride  as  too  fine  and  abstract  for  the  conduct 
of  life. 


A  GRAND  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW 
SCHOOL.1 

I  HAD  the  rare  privilege,  when  I  was  a  lad  of  fif 
teen,  to  make  the  acquaintance  and  to  be  favored 
with  the  confidence  of  a  business  man  of  "  the  new 
school."  So  many  precious  remarks  fell  from  his 
lips  during  the  period,  extending  to  thirty  years,  in 
which  I  was  honored  by  his  approval  or  by  his  en 
mity,  that  I  feel  injustice  would  be  done  both  to  com 
merce  and  to  him  unless  I  recorded  his  conduct  and 
experience  in  fitting  words. 

Mr.  Smith  had  risen  to  eminence  from  the  lowest 
social  grade.  As  a  beggar  boy,  his  exceptional  talent 
for  begging  had  roused  the  enthusiasm  of  a  set  of 
elderly  maidens,  who  were  attracted  by  his  peculiar 
whine  of  helplessness  and  his  peculiar  brag  of  hon 
esty.  They  put  him  to  school.  He  learned  there 
the  fundamental  principles  of  arithmetic,  and  little 
else  ;  but  his  aptitude  for  trade  was  developed  in  a 
marvellous  degree.  All  the  spending-money  of  the 
scholars  was  invariably  found,  at  the  end  of  a  vaca 
tion,  in  his  pockets.  Yet  no  boy  could  say  that  he 
had  been  cheated.  All  the  lads  felt  that  their  bits 

1  As  far  as  the  personal  pronoun  is  concerned,  this  narrative  is 
purely  fictitious. 


26       A  BUSINESS  MAN   OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

of  small  silver  coin  had  mysteriously  disappeared  in 
their  various  business  relations  with  Smith ;  but  still 
they  reluctantly  confessed  that  everything  was  "  fair 
and  square."  He  plucked  them,  it  would  seem,  piti 
lessly  ;  but  he  stood  by  his  own  contracts,  as  he  com 
pelled  them  to  stand  by  theirs.  No  act  of  positive 
dishonesty  was  ever  proved  against  this  plausible, 
cautious,  deferential,  and  relentless  trader.  The  boys 
declared  that  he  was  shrewd,  cunning,  and  hard,  but 
then  he  was  "  so  obliging  ! "  They  hated  him,  and 
at  the  same  time  accepted  his  services.  Could  they 
have  caught  him  in  any  act  of  juvenile  rascality,  they 
would  have  pounded  him  into  a  jelly  ;  but  he  was  so 
discreet  in  his  early  preparation  for  his  future  career 
that  at  the  age  of  ten  he  already  gave  promise  of  the 
great  merchant  and  banker  he  eventually  became. 
He  robbed  strictly  within  the  rules  of  boy  law.  It 
has  always  appeared  to  me  that  his  innate  genius 
for  traffic  was  rarely  more  beautifully  exhibited  in 
his  after-career  than  in  his  manner  of  dealing  with 
his  school-fellows,  most  of  whom  began  by  despising 
him  as  a  beggar,  and  all  of  whom  ended  in  recogniz 
ing  him  as  a  capitalist. 

On  leaving  school,  young  Smith  found  that  his 
possessions  amounted  to  thirty  dollars.  Instead  of 
rushing  at  once  to  the  elderly  maiden  ladies  who  had 
been  his  patrons,  and  depositing  the  money  in  their 
laps,  he  speeded  to  a  wholesale  fish-house  in  the  city, 
and  offered  himself  as  a  clerk.  The  senior  partner 
was  attracted  by  his  evident  talent,  and  especially  by 


A  BUSINESS  MAN   OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       27 

his  juvenile  cynicism  as  to  the  practical  application 
of  the  Golden  Rule.  The  old  man  felt  his  youth 
renewed  in  looking  at  the  premature  youngster,  and 
magnanimously  gave  him  a  place  in  his  counting- 
room  at  a  salary  of  fifty  dollars  a  year.  The  keen 
youth,  seeing  at  a  glance  that  his  employers  were 
pious  skinflints,  instantly  joined  their  church,  and  to 
all  appearance  became  a  pious  skinflint  himself.  But 
in  the  course  of  five  or  six  years  he  astonished  the 
firm  by  showing  that  he  knew  more  of  the  whole  fish 
business  than  they  did,  and  had  made  some  money 
by  quiet  speculations  of  his  own.  They  offered  to 
double,  treble,  quadruple  his  salary.  But  Smith  was 
inexorable.  Nothing  would  satisfy  him  but  a  part 
nership  in  their  questionable  gains.  This  they  reso 
lutely  refused.  Smith  promptly  set  up  for  himself 
on  a  small  capital  of  money,  but  a  large  capital  of 
knowledge  and  intelligence,  sold  "  short "  and  "  long,'* 
cornered  his  former  employers  in  two  or  three  heavy 
operations,  and  put  them  into  the  bankruptcy  court 
in  twenty-four  months  after  he  had  left  them.  His 
cleverness  was  never  more  evident  than  in  the  way 
in  which  lie  accomplished  this  difficult  feat  of  beating 
his  former  employers  by  a  skilful  use  of  their  own 
methods. 

Dominant  now  in  the  article  of  fish,  he  in  the 
course  of  a  few  years  ventured  cautiously  but  surely 
into  other  departments  of  commerce.  Pie  became  a 
general  merchant  in  other  commodities  than  mack 
erel  and  halibut.  He  at  last  assumed  the  dignity  of 


28      A  BUSINESS  MAN   OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

shipowner,  and  his  cargoes  to  and  from  the  East  and 
West  were  carried  in  his  own  vessels.  The  strategy 
he  had  learned  at  school  was  strictly  observed  in  his 
large  commercial  transactions.  He  had  two  grand 
qualifications  for  business  :  his  mind  was  quick  and 
his  heart  was  hard.  In  all  financial  panics  he  en 
forced  what  was  his  due  relentlessly,  regardless  of 
the  woe  it  might  bring  upon  nobler  people  than  him 
self  ;  but  even  though  money  was  at  three  or  four 
per  cent  a  month,  he  paid  punctually  all  his  own 
notes  as  they  matured.  He  would  thus  crush  a 
debtor  to  the  dust  —  grind  him  to  death  ;  but  still 
every  dollar  of  his  property,  and  every  resource  of 
his  credit,  were  freely  devoted  to  buy  money,  at  any 
rates  of  interest,  to  meet  his  own  obligations.  To 
"  fail  "  was  to  him  the  worst  ignominy.  Mean  in  all 
minor  matters,  lie  was  liberal  in  any  sacrifices  de 
manded  by  the  mutations  of  trade.  Almost  every 
body  detested  him,  yet  everybody  knew  that  he  might 
rely  both  on  the  skinflint's  word  and  bond. 

Such  a  merchant,  perhaps,  should  be  judged  by  his 
own  principles.  He  was  essentially  a  bird  of  prey, 
with  beak  and  talons  somewhat  ostentatiously  and  in 
solently  displayed.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  the 
great  body  of  the  merchants  of  the  country.  Indeed, 
he  laughed  at  all  such  sentimentality.  "  Get  the 
better  of  'em,"  was  his  motto.  It  may  be  said  that 
he  believed  religiously  in  the  maxim,  Homo  homini 
lupus,  —  "  Man  to  man  is,  and  must  be,  a  wolf." 

At  about  the  time  he  was  a  little  wearied  with 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.      29 

commerce,  and  had  obtained  a  fortune  of  two  mil 
lions,  the  moneyed  world  was  first  amazed  by  the 
rush  into  Wall  Street  of  securities  (ironically  so 
called)  based  on  the  new-born  "  enterprise  "  of  the 
country.  Bonds  and  stocks  renewed  in  him  the 
charm  which  merchandise  had  lost.  He  became  a 
gigantic  stock-jobber  and  banker.  On  account  of  his 
known  opulence  and  his  wide  reputation  for  sagacity 
and  integrity,  he  was  naturally  selected  by  the  rogues 
and  enthusiasts  of  the  nation  as  the  proper  person 
to  negotiate  large  loans.  Whether  these  loans  were 
based  on  unfinished  railroads,  or  undeveloped  mines, 
or  any  other  financial  castles  in  the  air,  he  contrived 
to  obtain  big  commissions  on  the  doubtful  or  worth 
less  securities  he  sold.  Those  who  relied  on  his 
ungenial  integrity  relied  also  on  his  hard  sense.  Be 
lieving  him,  they  took  his  advice.  The  result  was 
that  his  commissions  amounted  to  hundreds  and 
thousands  of  dollars,  their  losses  to  many  millions. 
They  could  not  assert  that  he  had  done  anything  to 
forfeit  his  character  for  honesty,  though  some  natu 
rally  growled  over  the  fact  that  he  had  himself  bought 
few  of  the  bonds  he  had  negotiated. 

It  was  at  this  point  of  his  triumphant  success  that 
I  happened  to  have  the. honor  of  being  one  of  his 
clerks,  and  in  a  short  time  his  confidential  one.  The 
thing  that  at  first  most  touched  me  was  the  simplicity 
of  his  religion.  It  consisted  in  the  simple  phrase, 
"  Goddam  !  "  This  phrase  was  so  often  on  his  lips 
that  it  took  me  some  time  to  discriminate  between 


30       A  BUSINESS  MAX  OF  THE   NEW  SCHOOL. 

the  persons  it  was  justly  or  unjustly  launched  against. 
I  believed  at  first  that  this  peculiar  form  of  religious 
faith  was  fulminated  against  people  who  righteously 
.  -  rved  the  anathema.  It  is  curious  how  many 
persons  engaged  in  trade  are  thus  fitly  designated. 
By  slow  degrees,  however,  I  at  last  found  that  im 
pious  employer  used  this  phrase  only  to  blast  every 
body  and  everything  interfering  with  his  business  de 
signs.  As  I  in  my  innocence  looked  at  the  matter,  it 
seemed  that  his  associates  in  speculation  should  be 
as  frequently  saluted  with  the  condemnation  as  his 
rivals  and  opponents.  Probably  the  most  interesting 
period  in  the  development  of  the  juvenile  mind  is  the 
first  exercise  of  the  faculty  of  ethical  generalization. 
The  moment  that  faculty  was  developed  in  my  im 
mature  intelligence  I  began  to  doubt  the  purity, 
though  not  the  sagacity,  of  my  employer.  The  readi- 
n>;>$  with  which  he  called  upon  the  Lord  of  heaven 
and  earth  to  curse  every  person  and  every  scheme 
that  at  all  obstructed  the  success  of  his  own  objects, 
insensibly  dimmed  my  perception  of  the  natural  piety 
which  I  at  first  supposed  dictated  his  outbreak  of  pro 
fane  moral  indignation.  That  the  Deity  should  be  on 
his  side  in  every  honest  transaction,  I  could  very  easily 
understand  ;  but  that  He  should  consign  to  the  lowest 
pits  of  the  infernal  regions  anybody  who  crossed  the 
purposes  of  Mr.  Smith,  puzzled  me  mightily,  especially 
when  Mr.  Smith  contrived  many  schemes  to  catch  un 
wary  people  in  his  traps,  and  then  fleece  them  remorse 
lessly.  His  favorite  formula  of  faith  lost  all  its  pious 


A   BUSINESS  MAN   OF   THE  NEW   SCHOOL.       31 

significance  in  view  of  such  doubtful  transactions. 
But  still  I  was  a  youth,  and  was  only  beginning  to 
learn  the  connection  between  such  a  business  and 
such  a  religion. 

There  is  probably  no  greater  shock  to  the  mind  of 
a  well-intentioned  country  lad,  who  has  sucked  in  hon 
esty  from  his  mother's  milk,  and  is  sent  to  confront 
the  temptations  of  a  city  with  a  mother's  prayers  hov 
ering  over  him,  than  when  he  finds  his  employer  is 
a  rascal  disguised  as  an  honest  man.  Shall  he  also 
become  a  rascal  ?  Shall  he  stoop  to  scoundrelisms 
which  his  inmost  soul  abhors  ?  It  is  a  matter  of  un 
certainty  whether  such  a  lad  is  consigned  to  a  long 
headed  rogue  or  to  a  merchant  of  unquestioned  in 
tegrity.  His  behavior  under  such  circumstances  is  a 
test  of  his  character ;  and  how  laboriously  such  char 
acter  is  formed  is  known  only  to  the  fathers  and 
mothers  and  sisters  who  have  combined  all  their 
moral  energies  to  form  it.  There  is  no  reason  why 
the  boy  should  have  more  privileges  and  be  protected 
by  more  affections  than  the  girl :  but  the  fact  that  he 
is,  is  too  notorious  to  admit  of  a  doubt.  The  abneea- 
tion  of  sisters  to  advance  their  brothers  is  one  of  the 
tragedies  of  human  life.  The  reverse  should  be  the 
.  but  unfortunately  it  is  not. 

But  to  return  to  my  theme.  As  soon  as,  with  mv 
awakened  intelligence,  I  had  penetrated  into  the  mind 
of  Mr.  Smith,  I  began  to  look  upon  him  with  a  certain 
horror.  He  had  the  greatest  confidence  in  my  hon 
esty,  and  even  allowed  me  to  sign  in  his  name  checks 


32      A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

amounting  to  many  millions  a  month  ;  but  he  used 
his  favorite  formula  of  vital  religious  faith  when  I  sug 
gested  that  my  services  were  not  remunerated  by  a 
thousand  a  year,  and  that  fifteen  hundred  would  but 
poorly  recompense  my  unceasing  work  in  his  journal 
and  ledger.  He  really  thought  that  my  devotion  to  his 
interests  was  something  due  to  his  pre-eminent  posi 
tion,  though  he  was  aware  that  I  might  ruin  him  in  a 
single  day  had  I  chosen  to  decamp  at  the  close  of  busi 
ness  hours  with  his  multitudinous  stocks  and  bonds 
in  a  carpet-bag.  He  nominally  possessed  millions  : 
but  he  trusted  me  with  all  the  evidences  of  his  wealth, 
and  allowed  me  the  power  to  draw  checks  on  all  his 
balances  in  the  banks  in  which  he  deposited.  Watch 
ing  like  a  wolf  —  "a  gray  old  wolf  and  a  lean "  —  to 
pounce  upon  his  prey,  he  was  singularly  blind  to  the 
fact  that  I,  his  poorly  paid  clerk,  who  had  begun  to 
hate  him  mortally,  might  at  any  moment  rush  off  to 
other  lands  with  the  spoils  of  his  rapacity  in  my  pocket. 
The  honesty  of  clerks,  when  they  have  persons  who 
are  essentially  knaves  for  their  employers,  is  one  of 
the  wonders  of  modern  civilization.  It  is  curious  that 
I  nevQr  had  the  slightest  temptation  to  use  the  vast 
powers  with  which  Mr.  Smith  endowed  me  to  his 
slightest  detriment.  I  might  easily  have  become  a 
millionnaire  in  some  European  country  had  I  chosen, 
like  my  employer,  to  become  a  rogue  in  my  own.  He 
invited  me  to  be  a  rogue  by  his  ingenuous  trust  in  my 
perfect  honesty,  while  1  was  daily  recording  transac 
tions  illustrating  every  variety  of  the  arts  of  chicane. 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       33 

I  witnessed  the  process  of  plundering,  without  any 
desire  to  plunder  the  plunderer.  This  is,  I  think,  a 
common  experience  in  the  life  of  clerks. 

One  occurrence  during  my  connection  with  this  es 
timable  man  will  never  fade  from  my  memory.  His 
wife,  a  meek  woman,  whom  he  swiftly  scared  into  the 
tomb,  left  him  a  daughter.  She  appeared  to  me  a 
foolish,  giggling,  bedizened  creature,  with  large  black 
eyes,  a  pug  nose,  and  a  complexion  which  was  red  to 
the  point  of  inflammation.  A  younger  clerk  in  the 
office,  on  a  salary  of  five  hundred  a  year,  declared, 
much  to  our  amusement,  that  he  was  madly  in  love 
with  her.  When  the  other  clerks  jeered  at  her  ob 
vious  defects  of  person  and  mind,  he  raved  about  her 
being  "  natural."  Whether  or  not  he  ever  felt  any  love 
for  her  it  is  impossible  for  me  to  determine,  but  at 
any  rate  he  convinced  her  of  the  sincerity  of  his  pas 
sion.  As  it  was  ridiculous  to  suppose  that  the  father 
would  consent  to  such  a  match,  the  aspiring  clerk  and 
the  heiress  eloped  and  were  married. 

Mr.  Smith's  facility  in  calling  upon  the  Deity  to 
condemn  everybody  who  interfered  with  his  own  will 
was  marvellously  increased  by  this  occurrence.  He 
blasphemed  with  a  savage  fluency  which  was  won 
derful  even  in  him.  His  son-in-law,  however,  was  a 
shallow  but  bright  young  fellow,  with  some  rich  connec 
tions.  He  had  been  in  the  office  long  enough  to  detect 
certain  secrets  of  the  business.  Accordingly  he  soon 
appeared  in  Wall  Street  as  a  speculator  on  a  large 
scale.  He  made  money,  backed  as  he  was  by  relatives 

3 


34      A  BUSINESS  MAN   OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

who  stood  by  him  with  their  financial  support,  —  that 
is,  as  long  as  they  saw  his  ventures  were  likely  to  be 
successful.  Mr.  Smith  went  deliberately  to  work  to 
ruin  him,  but  at  first  he  did  not  succeed.  The  son-iu- 
law,  in  an  early  "  corner  in  Erie,"  took  three  hundred 
thousand  dollars  out  of  the  pockets  of  the  father-in-law 
in  that  neat  and  beautiful  fashion  so  well  understood 
in  the  operations  of  stock  gambling.  We,  the  remain 
ing  clerks,  supposed  that  this  loss  would  endear  the 
son-in-law  to  the  father-in-law  by  showing  that  his 
daughter  was  married  to  a  person  whose  spirit  was 
akin  to  his  own.  But  we  made  a  sad  mistake.  Mr. 
Smith  became  gloomily  implacable  when  I  reported  the 
loss  to  him.  He  even  indulged  in  none  of  his  piously 
profane  ejaculations.  The  frown  on  his  brow  alone 
acknowledged  his  fixed  purpose.  I  felt  that  the  inci 
dent  was  something  which  altogether  transcended 
his  usual  fertility  in  profanity.  He  ventured  his 
'millions  without  stint  in  an  attempt  to  "corner"  his 
son-in-law.  In  his  first  rage  he  was  reckless,  but  he 
afterward  became  cool,  cautious,  watching  every  turn 
in  the  market,  and  intent  simply  on  catching  the 
husband  of  his  daughter  in  what,  in  the  slang  of  the 
street,  is  called  a  tight  place.  He  at  last  succeeded. 
The  poor  fellow  was  reduced  not  only  to  beggary,  but 
to  dishonesty.  After  desperate  attempts  to  retrieve 
his  position,  the  sori-in-law  ended  by  blowing  out  what 
brains  he  had  left.  His  wife,  a  withered  woman  of 
twenty-five,  again  entered  her  father's  mansion,  but 
none  of  us  could  say  that  she  was  "  natural."  A  more 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OE  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       85 

wretched  creature  —  one  more  thin,  cadaverous,  and 
woc-begone,  one  whose  original  homeliness  was  ren 
dered  more  pathetically  ugly  by  her  misery  —  never 
re-entered  a  mansion  in  Fifth  Avenue.  She  died  a 
year  after,  and  the  only  exclamation  of  the  bereaved 
father,  in  following  her  to  the  tomb,  was  his  favorite 
oath,  growled  in  an  undertone.  He  felt  that  all  the 
money  he  had  acquired  would  descend  to  strangers, 
and  he  was  inwardly  wrathful  that  the  wife  he  had 
bullied  and  the  daughter  he  had  killed  could  not  be 
by  his  side  when  he  made  his  own  exit  into  another 
and  probably  a  worse  world. 

The  most  curious  thing  in  my  experience  of  the 
moods  of  this  grand  old  business  man  was  his  sav- 
ageness  in  treating  his  clerks  after  his  many  bereave 
ments  had  soured  him  into  hopeless  misanthropy. 
He  swore  in  such  a  fashion  that  I  was  at  last  com 
pelled  to  tell  him  I  should  pitch  him  down  the  stairs 
of  his  own  office  unless  he  was  more  considerate  in 
his  curses.  This  intimation  made  him  only  all  the 
more  furious  ;  and  I  regret  to  record  that  I  parted 
with  this  grand  old  merchant  when  his  body  was 
prostrate  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  on  which  I  leis 
urely  descended. 

This  abrupt  termination  of  my  business  relations 
with  Mr.  Smith  naturally  resulted  in  a  resolution  on  his 
part  to  prosecute  me,  first  for  assault  and  battery,  and 
secondly  for  swindling.  His  judicious  friends  laughed 
him  out  of  the  first  proposition,  which  was  simply 
prompted  by  his  rage,  and  which  he  soon  felt  would 


36       A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW   SCHOOL. 

lead  to  disagreeable  communications  in  open  court. 
The  second  he  urged  with  great  rancor  and  energy, 
and  employed  one  of  those  intelligent,  meek-eyed, 
and  sharp-eyed  book-keepers  of  fifty,  who  never  in 
their  progress  through  life  get  beyond  a  moderate 
salary,  but  who  are  invaluable  to  merchants  doing  a 
large  business,  owing  to  their  talent  in  unravelling 
the  most  complicated  accounts,  and  the  beautiful  dex 
terity  with  which  they  clearly  record  the  most  con 
fused  transactions.  My  employer,  able  as  he  was  in 
managing  his  business,  was,  like  many  other  employers 
I  have  known,  deplorably  ignorant  of  the  mysteries  of 
book-keeping.  My  successor,  after  exhausting  all  the 
resources  of  his  art,  was  compelled  to  admit  that 
when  I  left  Mr.  Smith  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs  to 
which  I  somewhat  impatiently  consigned  him,  Mr. 
Smith  owed  me  one  hundred  and  twenty-six  dollars 
and  thirty-one  cents.  When  this  was  proved  to  him, 
he  indulged  his  favorite  anathema  with  more  than  his 
usual  religious  unction,  and  lavished  it  on  my  suc 
cessor  with  redoubled  force,  —  all  of  which  the  new 
book-keeper  patiently  bore  with  the  meekness  befitting 
his  station. 

I  easily  obtained  a  new  clerkship,  with  a  salary 
which  I  thought  was  more  in  correspondence  with 
my  services  than  that  which  I  had  obtained  from  Mr. 
Smith.  Indeed,  my  new  employers  allowed  me  to  go 
to  church  on  a  Sunday  morning  without  feeling  the 
burden  of  a  hundred  curses  launched  at  me  during  the 
week.  While  the  good  clergyman  was  preaching,  how- 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OE  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       37 

ever,  I  felt  stirring  within  me  the  impulses  of  what  I 
styled  a  righteous  wrath.  I  thought  I  could  not  be  a 
good  Christian  until  I  had  been  instrumental  in  de 
pleting  Mr.  Smith  of  some  of  his  ill-gotten  gains.  The 
faculty  of  generalization  had,  I  suppose,  outgrown  my 
sentiment  of  piety,  and  I  saw  clearly  the  means  of 
touching  the  only  soul  my  former  employer  had ; 
namely,  that  which  resided  in  his  pocket.  Brooding 
over  many  schemes  of  unmasking  and  punishing  the 
old  rogue,  I  thought  the  occasion  was  at  hand  in  an 
approaching  business  panic,  which  I  scented  in  the  air. 
In  this  emergency  it  was  notorious  that  Mr.  Smith 
was  very  heavily  engaged  on  the  side  of  a  body  of 
capitalists  who  were  rushing  up  shares  far  beyond 
their  intrinsic  worth,  regardless  of  the  ominous  signs 
of  a  revulsion,  which  were  apparent  to  those  cool 
heads  who  understand  that  an  annihilation  of  capital 
means  a  depreciation  of  all  values.  That  some  two  or 
three  or  four  hundred  millions  of  capital  were  certain 
to  be  annihilated  in  the  inevitable  collapse  of  certain 
railroad  schemes  was  plain  to  me.  This  I  proved  to  my 
employers.  I  showed  them  that  Mr.  Smith  was  sure 
to  be  caught  in  the  trap  into  which  he  had  designed 
to  lure  unwary  speculators.  They  acted  on  my  advice, 
and  made  a  million  of  dollars.  Mr.  Smith  lost  three 
millions.  When  I  had  the  honor  to  call  upon  him  for 
the  settlement  of  the  claims  which  our  firm  had  against 
him,  it  must  be  confessed  he  paid  punctually,  but  I 
had  to  bear  a  storm  of  oaths  which  seriously  wounded 
my  pride.  As  soon  as  I  held  his  checks  in  my  hands, 


38      A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

I  vehemently  told  him  that  my  opposition  to  him  was 
mortal,  and  that  it  would  never  cease  until  his  scoun- 
drelism  had  reduced  his  property  to  its  right  dimen 
sions.  In  fact,  I  enjoyed  the  exquisite  satisfaction  of 
telling  him  that  it  was  my  knowledge  of  his  methods  of 
doing  business  which  had  not  only  saved  my  employers 
from  falling  into  his  snares,  but  had  enabled  them  to 
add  a  million  of  dollars  to  their  already  large  capital. 
He  became  red,  almost  purple,  in  the  face  ;  but  his 
memory  of  a  sudden  descent  he  once  made  down  the 
stairs  of  his  own  office  prevented  his  wrath  from 
assuming  a  belligerent  aspect. 

As  a  result  of  these  transactions,  I  became  a  partner 
in  the  firm  of  which  I  had  previously  been  a  highly 
salaried  clerk.  We  prospered  marvellously ;  but  I 
knew  that  we  must  count  on  the  implacable  rancor  of 
my  former  employer.  Indeed,  I  never  drew  a  bill  on 
London  or  Liverpool,  whether  it  was  for  five  pounds 
or  five  thousand  pounds,  without  feeling  assured  that 
he  would  contrive  every  means  in  his  power  to  have 
it  dishonored.  But  his  blind,  mad  hatred  of  me  put 
him  in  my  power,  for  his  hatred  had  become  morbid. 
With  his  immense  wealth,  established  character  for 
formal  integrity  in  business  transactions,  and  shrewd 
intelligence,  he  might  have  injured  my  firm  greatly 
had  he  been  content  to  give  sly  insinuations,  doubtful 
nods  of  the  head,  and  the  other  signs  with  which  men 
of  property  indicate  their  distrust  or  disapproval  of 
adventurous  firms  which  go  beyond  their  capital,  and 
strive  to  place  themselves  on  a  level  with  the  Roths- 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       39 

childs,  Barings,  and  Hopes.  But  he  was  not  satisfied 
with  this  judicious  malice,  based  on  a  clear  mercantile 
perception  of  facts  and  principles.  He  was  enraged 
that  a  person  to  whom  he  thought  a  thousand  dollars 
a  year  was  a  fair  equivalent  for  services  received, 
should  dare  to  send  out  bills  of  credit,  receivable  all 
over  the  civilized  globe,  and  pretending  to  be  as  good 
as  specie  in  hand.  The  success  of  our  firm  in  our 
legitimate  business  as  bankers  did  not  deceive  me  as 
to  the  intentions  of  the  malignant  creature  with  whom 
we  had  to  contend.  The  generality  of  merchants 
laughed  at  his  threats;  they  received  our  bills  with 
out  any  questioning;  but  I  knew  that  my  original 
defiance  of  a  duel  to  the  death  would  be  answered. 
Mr.  Smith  was  worth  about  fifteen  millions ;  we  were 
worth  about  five ;  and  I  felt  that,  his  wife  and  daugh 
ter  being  dead,  he  had  no  stronger  purpose  in  life 
than  to  gratify  his  malevolence  by  ruining  his  old 
clerk. 

The  first  clash  came  in  1857.  We  were  victorious ; 
and  in  protecting  our  own  property  in  good  securities, 
we  necessarily  took  from  our  desperate  enemy  two 
millions  at  least.  Watchful  of  him  as  ever,  we  suc 
cessfully  withstood  his  assaults  during  the  anxious 
years  of  the  Civil  War.  I  was  so  perpetually  conscious 
of  his  enmity,  that  I  felt  his  hatred  palpitating  in 
every  variation  in  the  stock-market,  especially  in 
every  fall  in  the  price  of  the  securities  of  the  United 
States.  He  detested  the  Union  cause  almost  as  much 
as  he  detested  me.  It  was,  in  his  estimation,  a  "  nig- 


40      A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

ger  war,"  a  war  undertaken  by  the  North  without  any 
provocation,  a  war  against  the  "  rights"  of  the  South. 
The  bonds  of  the  United  States  were  not,  he  said, 
worth  the  paper  on  which  they  were  printed.  He  bet 
so  desperately  against  a  possible  Union  success,  that 
it  seemed  as  if  he  were  possessed  with  a  mania.  Our 
firm  held  the  bonds  of  the  United  States  to  the  extent 
of  ten  millions  of  dollars.  He  knew  this  fact,  but  he 
did  not  know  that  we  had  sent  them  to  prominent 
bankers  in  London,  Paris,  and  Frankfort,  and  had 
obtained  a  credit  on  them  of  five  millions  to  secure 
our  bills  of  exchange.  .  With  this  advantage,  we  were 
invulnerable.  He  thought,  when  gold  went  up  to  280, 
that  we  must  be  ruined;  but  the  tranquillity  with 
which  we  continued  to  draw  on  European  bankers, 
the  ease  with  which  our  bills  were  negotiated,  and 
the  promptness  of  their  payment  when  they  fell  due, 
gradually  impressed  him  with  the  fact  that  our  affairs 
were  conducted  on  a  solid  basis  of  ten  millions  in 
gold.  By  his  foolish  distrust  of  the  resources  of  the 
country,  he  had  lost  the  opportunity  to  double  his 
fortune ;  by  his  mad  assault  on  the  solvency  of  the 
United  States,  he  had  lost  half  of  the  fortune  with 
which  he  began  his  crusade  against  the  public  credit ; 
and  bitterer  than  all,  he  discovered  that  our  financial 
patriotism  had  added  largely  to  the  wealth  of  the 
firm.  He  never  recovered  from  this  disappointment. 
His  energies  were  worn  out  in  his  long  fight.  He 
grumbled  and  growled  and  swore  in  a  minor  key. 
In  a  few  months  he  retired  from  his  den  in  Wall 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       41 

Street  to  his  den  in  Fifth  Avenue.  There,  tormented 
with  the  feeling  that  he  had  sunk  three  quarters  of 
his  immense  property  in  an  endeavor  to  gratify  his 
impotent  malice,  he  pined  away.  The  clergymen  of 
the  Church  to  which  he  nominally  belonged  were  not 
wanting  in  attentions  and  consolations  to  the  old 
reprobate.  They  bore  his  incessant  swearing  with 
Christian  meekness,  having  ulterior  views  on  his 
remaining  property,  which  they  justly  estimated  as 
still  large,  and  which,  they  thought,  might  be  advan 
tageously  used  in  the  service  of  the  Lord,  though 
every  reference  of  Mr.  Smith  to  the  Lord  was  an 
explosion  of  senile  profanity  shocking  to  all  Christian 
ears.  The  blandness  with  which  these  smooth  cler 
ical  gentlemen  listened  to  his  oaths  indicated  that 
they  had  much  to  hope  by  the  bequests  of  his  will. 
On  his  death-bed  his  red  eyes,  in  the  malignant  glance 
they  cast  at  the  pious  circle  gathered  to  witness  the 
departure  of  such  a  saint,  might  have  suggested  some 
doubt  as  to  the  possibility  of  the  wolf  becoming  a 
lamb;  but  the  innocent  brethren  were  .satisfied,  and 
Mr.  Smith,  according  to  them,  made  a  pious  end. 

Mr.  Smith,  in  fact,  was  a  remarkable  instance  of 
"  the  merchant  of  the  new  school."  He  rose  grad 
ually  to  the  eminent  position  he  enjoyed  by  industry, 
frugality,  natural  sharpness  of  intellect,  and  natural 
hardness  of  heart.  He  early  learned  that  honesty 
was  the  best  policy ;  that  cheating  in  small  things 
was  the  greatest  mistake  an  ambitious  youth  could 
make;  that  to  keep  his  word  and  to  pay  his  obliga- 


42       A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

tions  were  the  conditions  of  commercial  success ;  that 
knavery  in  such  matters  did  not  pay ;  and  accord 
ingly,  with  such  a  reputation  for  formal  business 
integrity,  he  eventually  rose  to  be  one  of  the  most 
accomplished  leaders  of  business  banditti  that  Wall 
Street  ever  saw.  Had  he  frequented  gaming-tables, 
and  been  known  to  lose  or  gain  one  or  two  hundred 
dollars  a  night,  his  character  might  have  been  ruined. 
That  he  frequently  lost  or  gained  a  million  in  the 
mutations  of  the  stock-market  did  not  affect  his  repu 
tation  as  a  business  man  at  all,  or  incapacitate  him 
from  being  respected  as  a  "  worshipper"  in  a  fashion 
able  church.  Had  he  organized  a  band  of  robbers, 
and  shown  eminent  skill  in  petty  larceny  and  bur 
glary,  acutely  eluding  the  officers  of  justice  always  at 
his  heels,  and  betraying  his  confederates  the  moment 
they  rebelled  against  his  leadership,  he  might  have 
been  a  new  Jonathan  Wild ;  but  he  would  have  been 
a  thoroughly  disreputable  man,  with  no  position  in 
the  financial  world,  no  station  in  society,  no  pew  in 
the  sanctuary.  Besides,  he  could  not  have  amassed 
more  than  a  few  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  in 
thus  making  obvious  rascality  a  trade.  He  was  too 
shrewd  to  be  deluded,  even  when  a  boy,  by  the  tempt 
ing  promises  which  recognized  dishonesty  presents 
to  the  youthful  imagination.  He  early  perceived  that 
a  reputation  for  integrity  was  necessary  to  be  estab 
lished  before  any  extensive  acts  of  financial  rapine 
could  be  successfully  perpetrated.  Swindling  in  small 
things  he  early  learned  to  despise,  in  order  that  he 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.      43 

might  the  more  surely  swindle  in  large  things.  The 
moral  element  in  a  transaction  never  troubled  him  at 
all ;  its  possible  legal  aspect  troubled  him  much.  His 
logic  in  all  these  matters  showed  the  enlargement  of 
his  intellect.  Why,  he  said,  garrote  a  capitalist  in 
the  street  as  he  is  returning  home  at  night  from  his 
office  ?  The  most  that  could  be  gained  by  such  an 
operation  would  be  a  watch  and  a  pocket-book,  with 
danger  of  being  arrested  by  the  police,  tried  in  the 
courts,  and  sent  to  prison  for  a  term  of  years.  Better 
to  garrote  him  under  the  full  noonday  sun  by  a  corner 
in  stocks,  and  thus  deprive  him  of  all  his  property, 
without  any  risk  of  being  called  to  account  for  the 
robbery  before  any  of  the  tribunals  of  justice.  Mor 
ally,  of  course,  the  proceeding  was  identical  with  that 
of  a  sharper,  with  loaded  dice,  who  allures  his  victims 
into  games  of  chance,  or  of  a  free-booter  who  lies  in 
wait  at  the  corner  of  a  road  to  plunder  a  stage-coach ; 
but  it  had  the  immense  advantage  over  these  of  being 
legally  safe,  and  of  holding  out  the  promise  of  a 
hundredfold  more  booty.  Indeed,  he  held  that  the 
difference  between  a  great  operator  in  stocks  and  an 
ordinary  thief  was  the  difference  between  a  monarch 
who  makes  war  to  steal  the  territory  of  a  neighbor 
and  an  individual  murderer  who  kills  the  wayfarer  he 
designs  only  to  plunder.  This  horrible  old  spider  of 
speculation  experienced  a  certain  grim  delight  in  gaz 
ing  at  the  flies  as  they  fell  successively  into  his  cun 
ningly  spun  web,  and  when  he  darted  out  upon  them, 
they  were  devoured  with  all  the  savage  and  ravenous 


44      A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

glee  with  which  a  cannibal  devours  the  ribs  and  joints 
of  a  missionary. 

Not  the  least  noticeable  peculiarity  in  Mr.  Smith's 
character  was  the  absence  in  him  of  most  of  those 
qualities  of  avarice  which  we  associate  with  the  idea 
of  a  miser.  He  never  seemed  to  gloat  over  his  wealth, 
but  rather  gloated  over  the  power  it  gave  him  to  prey 
on  his  less  opulent  or  intelligent  fellow-citizens.  He 
pinched  and  starved  his  clerks,  not  so  much  because 
he  was  too  mean  to  give  them  adequate  salaries,  but 
because  he  wished  to  demonstrate  to  them  that  they 
were,  as  long  as  they  chose  or  were  compelled  to  stay 
with  him,  his  abject  slaves.  After  his  fortune  was 
made,  his  avarice  was  concentrated  in  making  himself 
a  money  power.  As  Napoleon  only  considered  one 
conquest  as  a  step  to  others,  so  this  creature  ruined 
his  competitors  in  Wall  Street  to-day,  only  to  form 
new  combinations  to  ruin  fresh  competitors  to-morrow. 
He  intensely  enjoyed,  not  his  wealth,  but  the  means 
his  wealth  afforded  him  of  preventing  others  from 
acquiring  it.  Having  no  heart,  his  only  happiness 
was  in  the  play  of  his  intellect  and  the  indulgence  of 
his  malignant  propensities.  In  studying  him,  I  have 
been  more  and  more  impressed  with  two  things, — 
first,  that  human  life  is  mercifully  limited  to  seventy 
or  eighty  years  ;  and  secondly,  that  old  men,  divorced 
from  all  family  connections,  with  no  grandchildren 
playing  about  their  knees,  and  with  no  memories  but 
those  which  record  the  triumphs  of  their  greed  of 
power  and  gain,  are  apt  to  be  the  deadliest  enemies 


A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL.       45 

of  the  human  race.  Their  life  has  been  an  enormous 
failure,  however  large  may  be  their  property ;  they 
know  the  fact  when  they  have  become  old,  however 
much  they  have  doubted  it  in  their  vigorous  age ;  and 
such  men  are  the  real  misanthropes  of  the  business 
world,  —  human  wolves  which  only  the  decay  of  the 
physical  powers  prevents  from  becoming  spiritual 
devils.  Mr.  Smith  was  saved  from  being  a  devil 
because  the  Lord  did  not  accord  to  him  the  lon 
gevity  of  Methuselah.  He  died  very  respectably,  with 
a  number  of  godly  clergymen  and  philanthropists 
around  his  bed.  In  his  will  he  left  all  his  remaining 
property  to  certain  rather  heretical  religious  and 
benevolent  associations,  not  one  of  which  expected 
the  old  cynic  would  give  it  a  dollar,  because  it  had 
never  toadied  him.  He  had  a  grand  burial,  —  indeed, 
a  weeping  New  York  followed  his  hearse  to  the  tomb. 
On  the  next  day  he  was  forgotten,  except  by  those  he 
had  cheated.  The  rage  of  the  sect  of  Christians  to 
which  he  was  nominally  attached,  and  whose  min 
isters  had  condoned  his  offences  against  Christian 
sentiments  and  principles  in  the  hope  that  he  would 
leave  his  ill-gotten  money  to  its  academies  and 
churches,  was  secretly  but  not  less  bitterly  expressed. 
The  old  man,  in  making  his  will,  probably  anticipated 
this  pious  indignation,  and  chuckled  over  it  with  a 
kind  of  senile  glee.  He  doubtless  thought,  in  his 
ironical  scorn,  that  those  who  had  been  preaching, 
for  the  fifty  years  he  had  attended  their  services, 
against  the  devil,  would  not  condescend  to  accept  the 


46      A  BUSINESS  MAN  OF  THE  NEW  SCHOOL. 

devil's  dollars.  Certainly  every  dollar  he  had  earned 
belonged  to  the  devil  rather  than  to  the  Lord.  As 
there  was  no  church  here  on  earth  which  was  for 
mally  organized  in  the  name  of  Satan,  he  probably 
felt  that  the  best  way  he  could  adopt  to  reach  his 
master  was  to  leave  his  money  to  a  class  of  persons 
he  had  always  abhorred,  because  they  assumed  to 
be  reformers,  abolitionists,  "  liberal "  Christians,  and 
whom  he  was  taught  by  his  clergyman  to  consider  as 
little  better  than  atheists  on  account  of  defects  in 
their  religious  creed.  He  accordingly  left  his  money 
to  them  in  the  hope  that  they  would  serve  the  cause 
to  which  he  had  devoted  his  life.  What  would  be  his 
rage  could  he  know  that  the  money  he  had  obtained 
by  inflicting  suffering  was  devoted  to  allaying  it, — 
that  the  devil's  money  was  strictly  expended  in  ad 
vancing  the  cause  of  the  good  Lord  ?  Peace  to  his 
ashes !  I  wish  I  could  add,  peace  to  his  soul !  But 
alas !  in  the  whole  course  of  his  life  he  never  showed 
that  he  had  any  soul. 


MR.  HARDHACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION  OF 
MAN  FROM  THE  MONKEY. 

I  CAN  stand  it  no  longer,  sir.     I  have  been  seething 
and  boiling  inwardly  for  a  couple  of  years  at  this  last 
and  final  insult  which  science  has  put  upon  human 
nature,  and  now  I  must   speak,  or,  if  you  will,  ex 
plode.     And  how  is  it,  I  want  to  know,  that  the  duty 
of  hurling  imprecations  at  this  infernal  absurdity  has 
devolved  upon  me  ?     Don't  we  employ  a  professional 
class  to  look  after  the  interests  of  the  race  —  fellows 
heavily  feed  to  see  to  it  that  gorilla  and  chimpanzee 
keep  their   distance  ;    paid,  sir,  by  me   and  you   to 
proclaim  that  men — ay,  and  women  too  —  are  at  the 
top  of  things  in  origin,  as  well  as  in  nature  and  des 
tiny  ?     Why  are  these  retained  attorneys  of  humanity 
so  confoundedly  cool  and  philosophical,  while  human 
ity  is  thus  outraged  ?     What 's  the  use  of  their  assert 
ing,  Sunday  after  Sunday,  that  man  was  made  a  little 
lower  than  the  angels,  when  right  under  their  noses 
are  a  set  of  anatomical  miscreants  who  contend  that 
he  is  only  a  little  higher  than  the  monkeys?     And 
the  thing  has  now  gone  so  far,  that  I  '11  be  hange<}  if 
it  is  n't  becoming  a  sign  of  a  narrow  and  prejudiced 
mind  to  scout  the  idea  that  we  are  all  descended  from 
mindless  beasts.     You  are  a  fossilized   old  fogy,  in 


48         MR.  HARDBACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION 

this  day  of  scientific  light,  if  you  repudiate  your  rela 
tionship  with  any  fossilized  monstrosity  which,  from 
the  glass  case  of  a  museum,  mocks  at  you  with  a 
grin  a  thousand  centuries  old.  To  exalt  a  man's  soul 
above  his  skeleton,  is  now  to  be  behind  the  age.  All 
questions  of  philosophy,  sir,  are  fast  declining  into  a 
question  of  bones,  —  and  blasted  dry  ones  they  are! 
The  largest  minds  are  now  all  absorbed  in  the  ugliest 
brutes,  and  the  ape  has  passed  from  being  the  butt  of 
the  menagerie  to  become  the  glory  of  the  dissecting- 
room.  And  let  me  tell  you,  sir,  that,  if  you  make 
any  pretensions  to  be  a  naturalist,  you  will  find  those 
of  your  co-laborers  who  defend  the  dominant  theory 
as  great  masters  of  hard  words  as  of  big  ones  ;  and  if 
you  have  the  audacity  to  deny  that  man  is  derived 
from  the  monkey,  it  is  ten  chances  to  one  they  will 
forthwith  proceed  to  treat  you  like  one. 

Now  I  go  against  the  whole  thing,  sir.  "When  the 
public  mind  first  took  its  bent  towards  science,  I,  for 
one,  foresaw  that  the  devil  would  soon  be  to  pay 
with  our  cherished  ideas.  Under  the  plea  of  exercis 
ing  some  of  the  highest  faculties  of  human  nature, 
these  scientific  descendentalists  have  exclusively  de 
voted  themselves  to  the  lowest  objects  of  human  con 
cern.  The  meaner  the  creature,  the  more  they  think 
of  it.  You,  sir,  as  a  free  and  enlightened  citizen  of 
this  great  Republic,  doubtless  think  something  of 
yourself ;  but  I  can  tell  you  there  is  n't  one  of  these 
origin-of-species  Solons  who  would  n't  pass  you  over 
as  of  no  account  in  comparison  with  any  anomalous 


OF  MAN  FROM  THE  MONKEY.  49 

rat  which  you  would  think  it  beneath  your  dignity  to 
take  the  trouble  of  poisoning.  There  is  n't  a  states 
man,  or  philanthropist,  or  poet,  or  hero,  or  saint  in 
the  land,  sir,  that  they  would  condescend  to  look  at, 
when  engaged  in  exploring  the  remains  of  some  igno 
rant  ass  of  the  Stone  Period.  As  for  your  ordinary 
Christian,  he  has  no  chance  whatever.  The  only  man 
they  think  worth  the  attention  of  scientific  intelli 
gence  is  pre-historic  man,  the  man  nearest  the  mon 
key.  And  this  is  called  progress !  This  is  the  result 
of  founding  schools,  colleges,  and  societies  for  the 
advancement  of  knowledge  !  No  interest  now  in  Ho 
mer,  Dante,  Shakspeare,  and  Milton, — in  Leonidas, 
Epaminondas,  Tell,  and  Washington,  —  in  Alexander, 
Hannibal,  Cassar,  and  Napoleon.  They,  poor  devils, 
were  simply  vertebrates  ;  their  structure  is  so  well 
known  that  it  is  unworthy  the  attention  of  our  mod 
ern  prowlers  into  the  earth's  crust  in  search  of  lower 
and  obscurer  specimens  of  the  same  great  natural  di 
vision.  What  do  you  think  these  resurrectionists  on 
a  great  scale,  these  Jerry  Crunchers  of  palaeontology, 
care  for  you  and  me  ?  Indeed,  put  Alfred  Tennyson 
alive  into  one  end  of  a  museum,  and  one  of  those  hor 
rible  monsters  whose  bones  are  being  continually  dug 
up  into  the  other,  and  see  which  will  be  rated  the 
more  interesting  object  of  the  two  by  the  "  great 
minds"  of  the  present  day. 

And  now  what  is  the  consequence  of  thus  inverting 
the  proper  objects  of  human  concern  ?  Why,  if  you 
estimate  things  according  to  their  descent  in  the  scale 

4 


50          MR.   HARDBACK  ON   THE  DERIVATION 

of  dignity,  and  occupy  your  faculties  exclusively  with 
organized   beings   below  man,  you  will  tend   to  ap 
proach    them.      Evil    communications    corrupt   good 
manners.      You   can't  keep  company  with  monkeys 
without  insensibly  getting  be-monkeyed.     Your  mind 
feeds  on  them  until  its  thoughts  take  their  shape  and 
nature.     Into  the  "  veins  of  your  intellectual  frame  " 
monkey  blood  is  injected.     The  monkey  thus  put  into 
you  naturally  thinks  that  monkeydom  is  belied ;  and 
self-esteem,  even,  is  not  revolted  by  the  idea  of  an  ape 
genealogy.     In  this  way  the  new  theory  of  the  origin 
of  man  originated.     Huxley  must  have  pretty  thor 
oughly  assimilated  monkey  before  he  recognized  his 
ancestor  in  one.     The  poor  beast  himself  may  have 
made  no  pretensions  to  the  honor,  until  he  was  men 
tally  transformed  into  Huxley,  entered  into  the  sub 
stance    of    Huxley's    mind,    became    inflamed    with 
Huxley's  arrogance.      This  is  the  true  explanation, 
not  perhaps  of  the  origin  of  species,  but  of  the  ori 
gin  of  the  theory  of  the  origin ;  and  I  should  like  to 
thunder  the  great  truth  into  the  ears  of  all  the  scien 
tific  societies  now  talking  monkey  with  the  self-satis 
fied  air  of  great  discoA^erers.     Yes,  sir,  and  I  should 
also  be  delighted  to  insinuate  that  this  progress  of 
monkey  into  man  was  not  so  great  an  example  of 
"  progressive  development "  as  they  seem  inclined  to 
suppose,  and  did  n't  require  the  long  reaches  of  pre 
historic  time  they  consider  necessary  to  account  for 
the  phenomenon.     Twenty  years  would  be  enough,  in 
all  conscience,  to  effect  that  development. 


OP  MAN  FROM  THE  MONKEY.  51 

Thus  I  tell  you,  sir,  it  is  n't  monkey  that  rises  ana 
tomically  into  man,  but  rather  man  that  descends 
mentally  into  monkey.  Why,  nothing  is  more  com 
mon  than  to  apply  to  us  human  beings  the  names  of 
animals  when  we  display  weaknesses  analogous  to 
their  habitual  characters.  But  this  is  metaphor,  not 
classification ;  poetry,  not  science.  Thus  I,  Solomon 
Hardhack,  was  called  a  donkey  the  other  day  by  an 
intimate  friend.  Thought  it  merely  a  jocose  reference 
to  my  obstinacy,  and  did  not  knock  him  down.  Called 
the  same  name  yesterday  by  a  comparative  anatomist. 
Thought  it  an  insulting  reference  to  my  understand 
ing,  and  did.  But  suppose  that,  in  respect  both  to 
obstinacy  and  understanding,  I  had  established  to  my 
own  satisfaction  a  similarity  between  myself  and  that 
animal,  do  you  imagine  that  I  would  be  donkey  enough 
to  take  the  beast  for  my  progenitor  ?  Do  you  suppose 
that  I  would  go  even  further,  and,  having  established 
with  the  donkey  a  relation  of  descent,  be  mean  enough 
to  generalize  the  whole  human  race  into  participation 
in  my  calamity  ?  No,  sir,  I  am  not  sufficiently  a  man 
of  science  to  commit  that  breach  of  good  manners. 
Well,  then,  my  proposition  is,  that  nobody  who  rea 
sons  himself  into  a  development  from  the  monkey  has 
the  right  to  take  mankind  with  him  in  his  induction. 
His  argument  covers  but  one  individual,  —  himself. 
As  for  the  Hardbacks,  they  at  least  beg  to  be  excused 
from  joining  him  in  that  logical  excursion,  and  insist 
on  striking  the  monkey  altogether  out  from  their 
genealogical  tree. 


t>2         MR.   HARDBACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION 

And  speaking  of  genealogical  trees,  do  the  adhe 
rents  of  this  mad  theory  realize  the  disgrace  they  are 
bringing  on  the  most  respectable  families  ?  There  is 
not  an  aristocracy  in  Europe  or  America  that  can 
stand  it  one  moment,  for  aristocracy  is  based  on  the 
greatness  of  forefathers.  In  America,  you  know,  no 
body  is  aristocratic  who  cannot  count  back  at  least 
to  his  great-grandfather,  who  rode  in  a  carriage,  or  — 
drove  one.  As  for  the  Hardbacks,  I  may  be  allowed 
to  say,  though  I  despise  family  pride  as  much  as  any 
man,  that  they  came  in  with  the  Conqueror  and  went 
out  with  the  Puritans.  But  if  this  horrible  Huxlcian 
theory  be  true,  the  farther  a  person  is  from  his  origin, 
the  better  ;  antiquity  of  descent  is  no  longer  a  title 
to  honor ;  and  a  man  must  pride  himself  in  looking 
forward  to  his  descendants  rather  than  back  to  his 
ancestors.  And  what  comfort  is  this  to  me,  an  un 
married  man  ?  With  a  monkey  in  the  background, 
how  can  even  a  Hapsburg  or  a  Guelf  put  on  airs  of 
superiority  ?  How  must  he  hide  his  face  in  shame  to 
think,  that,  as  his  line  lengthens  into  an  obscure  an 
tiquity,  the  foreheads  of  his  house  slope,  and  their  jaws 
project ;  that  he  has  literally  been  all  his  life  aping 
aristocracy,  instead  of  being  the  real  thing ;  and  that, 
when  he  has  reached  his  true  beginning,  his  only 
consolation  must  be  found  in  the  fact  that  his  great 
skulking,  hulking,  gibbering  baboon  of  an  ancestor 
rejoices,  like  himself,  in  the  possession  of  "  the  third 
lobe,"  "  the  posterior  cornu  of  the  lateral  ventricle," 
and  "  the  hippocampus  minor."  Talk  about  radical- 


OF  MAN   FROM  THE  MONKEY.  53 

ism,  indeed  !  Why,  I,  who  am  considered  an  offence 
to  my  radical  party  for  the  extremes  to  which  I  run, 
cannot  think  of  this  swamping  of  all  the  families  in 
the  world  without  a  thrill  of  horror  and  amazement ! 
It  makes  my  blood  run  cold  to  imagine  this  infernal 
Huxley  pertly  holding  up  the  frontispiece  of  his  book 
in  the  faces  of  the  haughty  nobility  and  gentry  of  his 
country,  and  saying,  "  Here,  my  friends,  are  drawings 
of  the  skeletons  of  gibbon,  orang,  chimpanzee,  gorilla ; 
select  your  ancestors ;  you  pays  your  money  and  has 
your  choice."  I  don't  pretend  to  know  anything 
about  the  temper  of  the  present  nobility  and  gentry 
of  England  ;  but  if  the  fellow  should  do  this  thing 
to  me,  I  would  blow  out  of  his  skull  everything  in  it 
which  allied  him  with  the  apes,  —  taking  a  specially 
grim  vengeance  on  "  the  posterior  cornu  of  the  lateral 
ventricle,"  —  as  sure  as  my  name 's  Hardback,  and  as 
sure  as  there  's  any  explosive  power  in  gunpowder. 

And  in  this  connection,  too,  I  should  like  to  know 
how  the  champions  of  this  man-monkey  scheme  get 
over  a  theological  objection.  Don't  start,  sir,  and 
say  I  am  unscientific.  I  am  not  going  to  introduce 
Christianity,  or  monotheism,  or  polytheism,  or  fetich- 
ism,  but  a  religion  which  you  know  was  before  them 
all,  and  which  consisted  in  the  worship  of  ancestors. 
If  you  are  in  the  custom  of  visiting  in  good  society, 
you  will  find  that  that  is  a  form  of  worship  which  has 
not  yet  altogether  died  out,  but  roots  itself  in  the 
most  orthodox  creeds.  Now  you  must  admit  that 
the  people  who  Worshipped  their  ancestors  were  the 


54         MR.  HARDBACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION 

earliest  people  of  whose  religion  we  have  any  archaeo 
logical  record,  and  therefore  a  people  who  enjoyed  the 
advantage  of  being  nearer  the  ancestors  of  the  race 
than  any  of  the  historical  savages  to  whom  you  can 
appeal.  I  put  it  to  you  if  this  people,  catching  a 
glimpse  of  the  monkey  at  the  end  of  their  line,  if  the 
monkey  was  really  there,  would  have  been  such  dolts 
as  to  worship  it  ?  A  HE  worship  an  IT  !  Don't  you 
see,  that,  if  this  early  people  had  nothing  human  but 
human  conceit,  that  would  alone  have  prevented  them 
from  doing  this  thing?  Don't  you  see  that  they 
would  have  preserved  a  wise  reticence  in  regard  to 
such  a  shocking  bar-sinister  in  their  escutcheons  ? 
Worship  ancestors,  when  ancestors  are  known  to 
have  been  baboons!  Why,  you  might  as  well  tell 
me  our  fashionable  friend  Eglantine  would  worship 
his  grandfather  if  he  knew  his  grandfather  was  a 
hodman.  No,  sir.  That  early  people  worshipped 
their  ancestors,  because  they  knew  their  ancestors 
were  higher  and  nobler  than  themselves.  To  sup 
pose  the  contrary  would  be  a  cruel  inputation  on  the 
character  of  worthy  antediluvians,  who  unfortunately 
have  left  no  written  account  of  themselves,  and  there 
fore  present  peculiar  claims  on  the  charitable  judg 
ment  of  every  candid  mind. 

You  have  been  a  boy,  sir,  and  doubtless  had  your 
full  share  in  that  amusement,  so  congenial  to  ingenu 
ous  youth,  of  stirring  up  the  monkeys.  You  remember 
what  an  agreeable  feeling  of  elation,  springing  from  a 
conscious  sense  of  superiority  to  the  animals  pestered, 


OF  MAN  FROM  THE  MONKEY.  55 

accompanied  that  exhilarating  game.  But  suppose, 
while  you  were  engaged  in  it,  the  suspicion  had 
flashed  across  your  mind  that  you  were  worrying 
your  own  distant  relations  ;  that  it  was  undeveloped 
humanity  you  were  poking  and  deriding ;  that  the 
frisking,  chattering,  snarling  creature  you  were  tor 
menting  was  trying  all  the  while  to  say,  in  his  unin 
telligible  speech,  "  Am  I  not  to  be  a  man  and  a 
brother  ? "  Would  not  such  an  appeal  have  dashed 
your  innocent  mirth  ?  Would  you  afterwards  have 
been  so  clamorous  or  beseeching  for  parental  pen 
nies,  as  soon  as  the  dead  walls  of  your  native  town 
flamed  with  pictorial  announcements  of  the  coming 
menagerie  ?  No,  sir,  you  could  n't  have  passed  a 
menagerie  without  a  shudder  of  loathing  or  a  pang 
of  remorse.  How  fortunate  it  was,  that,  for  the  full 
enjoyment  of  your  youthful  sports,  you  were  ignorant 
of  the  affecting  fact  that  the  monkey's  head  as  well 
as  your  own  possessed  the  "  hippocampus  minor  "  and 
"  the  posterior  cornu  of  the  lateral  ventricle  "  ! 

I  admit  that  this  last  argument  is  not  addressed  to 
your  understanding  alone.  I  despise  all  arguments 
on  this  point  that  are.  I,  for  one,  am  not  to  be  rea 
soned  out  of  my  humanity,  and  I  won't  be  diddled 
into  turning  baboon  through  deference  for  anybody's 
logic.  My  opinions  may  be  up  for  argument,  but  I 
myself  am  not  up  for  argument.  In  a  question  affect 
ing  human  nature  itself,  all  the  qualities  of  that  nature 
should  be  addressed.  Self-respect,  respect  for  your 
parentage  and  your  race,  your  moral  instincts,  and 


56         MR.  HARDHACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION 

that  force  in  you  which  says  "  I,"  —  all  these,  having 
an  interest  in  such  a  discussion,  should  have  a  voice 
in  it ;  and  I  execrate  the  flunky  who  will  allow  him 
self  to  be  swindled  out  of  manhood,  and  swindled  into 
monkeyhood,  by  that  pitiful  little  logic-chopper  he 
calls  his  understanding.  I  am  not  "  open  to  convic 
tion  "  on  this  point,  thank  God !  I  don't  pretend  to 
know  whether  a  "  third  lobe  "  is  in  my  head  or  not, 
but  I  do  know  that  Solomon  Hardhack  is  there,  and 
as  long  as  he  has  possession  of  the  premises,  you  will 
find  written  on  his  brow,  "  No  monkeys  need  apply  !  " 
Do  you  tell  me  that  this  is  a  matter  exclusively  for 
anatomists  and  naturalists  to  decide  ?  That 's  the 
most  impudent  pretension  of  all.  Why,  it 's  all  the 
other  way.  Have  I  not  a  personal  interest  in  the  ques 
tion  greater  than  any  possible  interest  I  can  have  in 
the  diabolical  lingo  of  scientific  terms  in  which  those 
fellows  state  the  results  of  their  investigations  ?  Have 
I  delegated  to  any  College  of  Surgeons  the  privilege 
of  chimpanzeeizing  my  ancestors  ?  No,  sir.  Just 
look  at  it.  Here  are  the  members  of  the  human  race, 
going  daily  about  their  various  avocations,  entirely 
ignorant  that  any  conspiracy  is  on  foot  to  trick  them 
out  of  their  fatherhood  in  Adam.  While  they  are 
thus  engaged  in  getting  an  honest  living,  a  baker's 
dozen  of  unauthorized  miscreants  assemble  in  a  dis 
secting-room,  manipulate  a  lot  of  skulls,  and  decide 
that  the  whole  batch  of  us  did  not  descend  from  a 
human  being.  I  tell  you  the  whole  thing  is  an  atro 
cious  violation  of  the  rights  of  man.  It 's  uncon- 


OF  MAN  FROM  THE  MONKEY.  57 

stitutional,  sir  !      Talk  about  the  glorious  principle 
of  "  No  taxation  without  representation  "  !     That  is 
simply  a  principle  which  affects  our  pockets,  and  we 
fought,  bled,  and  died  for  it.      Shall  we  not  do  a 
thousand  times  more  for  our  souls  ?     Shall  we  let  our 
souls  be  voted  away  by  a  congress  of  dissectors,  not 
chosen  by  our  votes,  —  persons  who  not  only  don't 
represent,   but   infamously   misrepresent   us  ?     Why, 
it's   carrying   the  tactics  of   a  New  York  Common 
Council  from  politics  into  metaphysics  !     And  don't 
allow  yourself  to  be  humbugged  by  these  assassins  of 
your  nature.     I  know  the  way  they  have  of  election 
eering.     It  is,  "My  dear  Mr.  Hardback,  a  man  of 
your  intelligence   can't  look  at  this  ascending  scale 
of  skulls  without  seeing  that  the  difference  between 
Homo  and  Pithecus  is  of  small  account,"  —  "A  man 
of  your  candid  mind,  Mr.  Hardback,  must  admit  that 
no  absolutely  structural  line  of  demarcation,  wider 
than   that  between  the   animals  which  immediately 
succeed  us  in  the  scale,  can  be  drawn  between  the 
animal   world   and   ourselves."     And   while   I   don't 
comprehend  a  word  of  this  cursed  gibberish,  I  am 
expected  to  bow,  and  look  wise,  and  say,  "  Certainly," 
and   "  Just   so,"    and    "  It  's    plain   to   the   meanest 
capacity,"  and  be  soft-sawdered  out  of  my  humanity, 
and  infamously  acknowledge  myself  babooned.     But 
they  can't  try  it  on  me,  sir.     When  a  man  talks  to 
me  in  that  fashion,  I  measure  with  my  eyes  "  the 
structural  line  of  demarcation  "  between  his9  and  with 
my  whole  force  plant  there  my  fist. 


58         MR.   HARDBACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION 

Bo  you  complain  that  I  am  speaking  in  a  passion  ? 
It  seems  to  me  it 's  about  time  for  all  of  us  to  be  in  a 
passion.  Perhaps,  if  we  show  these  men  of  science 
that  there  is  in  us  a  little  righteous  wrath,  they  may 
be  considerate  enough  to  stop  with  the  monkey,— 
make  the  monkey  "  a  finality,"  sir,  and  not  go  lower 
down  in  the  scale  of  creation  to  find  an  ancestor  for 
us.  It  is  our  meek  submission  to  the  monkey  which 
is  now  urging  them  to  attempt  more  desperate  out 
rages  still.  What  if  Darwin  had  been  treated  as  he 
deserved  when  he  published  the  original  edition  of 
his  villanous  book  ?  If  I  had  been  Chief  Justice  of 
England  when  that  high  priest  of  "  natural  selection  " 
first  tried  to  oust  me  out  of  the  fee-simple  of  my 
species,  I  would  have  given  him  an  illustration  of 
"  the  struggle  for  existence "  he  would  n't  have  rel 
ished.  I  would  have  hanged  him  on  the  highest 
gallows  ever  erected  on  this  planet  since  the  good 
old  days  of  Haman.  What  has  been  the  result  of  a 
mistaken  clemency  in  his  case  ?  Why,  he  has  just 
published  a  fourth  edition  of  his  treatise,  and  what 
do  you  think  he  now  puts  forward  as  our  "  probable  " 
forefather?  "It  is  probable,"  he  says,  "from  what 
we  know  of  the  embryos  of  mammals,  birds,  fishes, 
and  reptiles,  that  all  the  members  in  these  four  great 
classes  are  the  modified  descendants  of  one  ancient 
progenitor,  which  was  furnished  in  its  adult  state 
with  branchiae,  had  a  swim-bladder,  four  simple  limbs, 
and  a  long  tail  fitted  for  an  aquatic  life."  Probable, 
indeed  !  Why,  it  is  also  probable,  I  suppose,  that  this 


OF  MAN  FROM  THE  MONKEY.  59 

accounts  for  the  latent  tendency  in  the  blood  of  our 
best-educated  collegians  to  turn  watermen,  and  aban 
don  themselves  with  a  kind  of  sacred  fury  to  the 
fierce  delight  of  rowing-matches.  The  "  long  tail 
fitted  for  an  aquatic  life  "  will  also  "  probably  "  come 
in  course  of  time.  Student-mammals  of  Harvard  and 
Yale,  what  think  you  of  your  "  one  ancient  progeni 
tor  "  ?  Inheritors  of  his  nature,  are  you  sure  you 
have  yet  succeeded  in  cutting  off  the  entail  of  the 
estate  ? 

We  have  been  brought  up,  sir,  in  the  delusive  belief 
that  "  revolutions  never  go  backwards."  It 's  a  lie, 
I  tell  you  ;  for  this  new  revolution  in  science  docs 
nothing  else.  It  is  going  backwards  and  backwards 
and  backwards,  and  it  won't  stop  until  it  involves  the 
whole  of  us  in  that  nebulous  mist  of  which,  it  seems, 
all  things  are  but  the  "  modified  "  development.  Well, 
in  for  a  penny,  in  for  a  pound.  Let  us  not  pause  at 
that  "  long  tail  fitted  for  an  aquatic  life  "  which  made 
our  one  ancient  progenitor  such  an  ornament  of  fluvial 
society,  but  boldly  strike  out  into  space,  and  clutch 
with  our  thoughts  that  .primitive  tail  which  flares 
behind  the  peacock  of  the  heavens,  —  the  comet. 
There  's  nebulous  matter  for  your  profound  contem 
plation.  That  is  the  flimsy  material  out  of  which 
stars,  earth,  water,  plants,  jelly-fish,  ancient  progeni 
tor,  monkey,  man,  were  all  equally  evolved.  That  is 
the  grand  original  of  all  origins.  We  are  such  stuff 
as  comets'  tails  are  made  of,— "third  lobe,"  "hippo 
campus  minor,"  "  posterior  cornu  of  the  lateral  ven- 


60         MR.  HARDBACK  ON  THE  DERIVATION 

tricle,"  and  all  the  rest.  "  Children  of  the  Mist,"  we 
are  made  by  this  "  sublime  speculation "  at  home  in 
the  universe.  Nebuchadnezzar,  when  he  went  to 
grass,  only  visited  a  distant  connection.  The  stars 
over  our  heads  have  for  thousands  of  years  been  wink 
ing  their  relationship  with  us,  and  we  have  never  in 
telligently  returned  the  jocose  salutation,  until  science 
taught  us  the  use  of  our  eyes.  We  are  now  able  to 
detect  the  giggle,  as  of  feminine  cousins,  in  the  grain 
whose  risibilities  are  touched  by  the  wind.  We  can 
now  cheer  even  the  dull  stone  which  we  kick  from 
our  path  with  a  comforting  "  Hail  fellow,  well  met !  " 
We  must  not  be  aristocrats  and  put  on  airs.  We 
must  hob  and  nob  with  all  the  orders  of  creation, 
saying  alike  to  radiates,  articulates,  and  mollusks, 
"  Go  ahead,  my  hearties!  don't  be  shamefaced  ;  you're 
as  good  as  vertebrates,  and  only  want,  like  some  of 
our  human  political  lights,  a  little  backbone  to  have 
your  claims  admitted.  You  arc  all  on  your  glorious 
course  manward,  via  the  ancient  progenitor  and  the 
chimpanzee.  It  seems  a  confounded  long  journey ; 
for  Nature  is  a  slow  coach,  and  thinks  nothing  of  a 
million  of  years  to  effect  a  little  transformation.  But 
one  of  these  days  our  science  may  find  means  to 
expedite  that  old  sluggard,  and  hurry  you  through 
the  intermediate  grades  in  a  way  to  astonish  the 
venerable  lady.  Liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity, — 
those  are  the  words  which  will  open  the  gates  of  your 
organized  Bastiles,  and  send  your  souls  on  a  career 
of  swifter  development.  Trust  in  Darwin,  and  let 


OF  MAN  PROM  THE  MONKEY.  61 

creation  ring  with  your  song  of  "  A  good  time  coming, 
Invertebrates ! " 

Well,  sir,  you  want  logic,  and  there  you  have  it  with 
a  vengeance  !     I  have  pitched  you  back  into  nebula, 
where  these  fellows  tell  me  you  belong,  and  I  trust 
you  're  satisfied.     Now  what  is  my  comfort,  sir,  after 
making  my  brain  dizzy  with  this  sublime  speculation 
of  theirs  ?     Why,  it 's  found  in  the  fact  that,  by  their 
own  concession,  the  thing  will  not  work,  but  must 
end  in  the  biggest  "  catastrophe  "  ever  heard  of.     The 
whole  infernal  humbug  is  to  explode,  sir,  and  by  no 
exercise  of  their  "hippocampus  minor"  can  they  pre 
vent  it.     This  fiery  mist,  which  has  hardened  and 
rounded  into  our  sun  and  planets,  and  developed  into 
the  monkey's  "third  lobe"  and  ours,  does  not  lose 
the  memory  or  the  conceit  of  its  origin,  but  is  deter 
mined  to  get  back  into  its  first  condition  as  quickly 
as  circumstances  will  admit.     It  considers  itself  some 
how  to  have  been  swindled  in  every  step  of  the  long 
process  it  has  gone  through  in  arriving  at  our  brains. 
It   doesn't  think    the   speculation  pays;   prefers  its 
lounging,  vagabond,  dolce  far  niente  existence,  loafing 
through  the  whole  space  between  the  sun  and  Nep 
tune,  to  any  satisfaction  it  finds  in  being  concentrated 
in  your  thoughts  or  mine ;  and  accordingly  it  medi 
tates  a  coup  d'etat  by  which  the  planets  are  to  fall 
into  the  sun  at  such  a  pace  as  to  knock  the  whole 
system  into  eternal  smash,  and  reduce  it  to  its  origi 
nal  condition  of  nebulous  mist,  sir.     Do  you  like  the 
prospect?     I  tell  you  there  is  no  way  of  escaping 


62  THE  DERIVATION  OE  MAN. 

from  conclusions,  if  you  are  such  a  greenhorn  as  to 
admit  premises.  I  have  been  over  the  whole  chain 
of  the  logic,  and  find  its  only  weak  link  is  the  monkey 
one.  Knock  that  out,  and  you  save  the  solar  system 
as  well  as  your  own  dignity  as  a  man,  sir ;  retain  it, 
and  some  thousands  of  generations  hence  the  brains 
of  your  descendants  will  be  blown  into  a  texture  as 
gauzy  as  a  comet's  tail,  and  it  will  be  millions  of  ages 
before,  in  the  process  of  a  new  freak  of  development 
in  the  unquiet  nebula,  they  can  hope  to  arrive  again 
at  the  honor  of  possessing  that  inestimable  boon,  dear 
equally  to  baboons  and  to  men,  "  the  posterior  cornu 
of  the  lateral  ventricle  "  ! 


MR.   HARDHACK   ON  THE   SENSATIONAL   IN 
LITERATURE  AND   LIFE. 

HAVE  I  read  Miss  Braddon's  last?     Ay,  and  her 
first  too.     Why,  during  the  last  three  or  four  months 
I  have  been  through  a  whole  course  of  sensational 
novels,  and,  in  imagination,  have  married  more  wives 
than  Brigham  Young,  and  committed  more  homicides 
than  Captain  Kidd ;  and  I  flatter  myself  I  have  got 
at  the  whole  secret  of  the  thing.     It's  whiskey  for 
the  mind,  sir,  —  the  regular  raw,  rot-brain  fluid  of  the 
Devil's  own  distilling.     What  do  you  suppose  is  to  be 
come  of  the  intellects  and  hearts  of  a  generation  which 
takes  to  such  a  terrible  tipple  ?     They  are  all  at  it,  — 
men  and  women,  boys  and  girls,  imbibing  the  sting 
ing,  burning,  corroding  beverage  as  though  it  were  as 
innocent  as  milk.     "  Drink,  pretty  creature,  drink,"  - 
that  is  the  song  of  the  Circes  and  the  Comuses  of  the 
new  school  of  depravity,  as  they  hold  their  yellow  cups 
to  the  lips  of  sweet  fifteen :  "  This,  my  dear,  has  a 
delicious  flavor  of  theft ;  this  of  arson ;  this  of  big 
amy  ;  this  of  murder.     Drink,  and  Newgate  and  the 
Old  Bailey  will   be  more  familiar  to  you  than  the 
school -"house  and  the  church !     Drink,  and  you  will 
draw  the  charming  convicts  out  of  their  cells,  and 


64        MR.   HARDHACK  ON  THE   SENSATIONAL 

have  them  all  nicely  housed  in  your  own  imagination ! 
Drink,  drink,  drink  !  " 

But,  you  retort,  do  not  the  greatest  writers  deal 
with  the  greatest  crimes  ?  Is  Shakspeare  himself  an 
economist  of  the  dagger  and  the  bowl  ?  Why  object 
to  contemporary  romancers  for  taking  criminals  for 
heroes,  when  criminality  enters  so  largely  into  the 
heroes  of  all  dramas  and  romances  ?  You  think  you 
have  me,  do  you  ?  Well,  others  before  you  have  been 
infatuated  with  the  idea  that  they  could  get  Solomon 
Hardback  into  a  corner,  but  he  always  found  a  road 
out  of  it  as  wide  as  the  Appian  Way.  I  admit  at  once 
that  I  have  no  objection  to  murders  when  they  are 
perpetrated  by  Shakspeare  or  Scott.  The  more  the 
better,  say  I.  When  the  old  woman  told  her  doctor 
that  she  feared  her  health  was  failing,  because  during 
the  past  week  she  had  not,  in  reading  the  newspaper, 
"  enjoyed  her  murders,"  she  caught  a  glimpse  of  the 
great  principle  of  all  art,  sir.  When  I  read  Macbeth, 
when  I  see  it  performed  by  actors  of  imagination,  I 
enjoy  the  murders.  When  I  read  or  see  a  coarse  melo 
drama,  I  don't  enjoy  the  murders.  What 's  the  rea 
son  ?  Why,  my  artistic  sense  is  satisfied  by  the  first, 
and  shocked  by  the  second.  The  tragedy  lifts  your 
whole  nature  —  sentiment,  conscience,  reflection,  im 
agination,  whatever  there  is  in  you  —  altogether  above 
actual  life  into  the  ideal  world  of  art.  You  become 
conscious  of  a  new,  strange,  and  vivid  play  of  all  your 
faculties ;  and  there  is  delight  in  that,  even  though 
you  may  now  and  then  shudder  or  blubber.  It  is  an 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  65 

escape  out  of  all  the  conditions  of  your  daily  life,  and 
you  feel  ten  times  the  man  you  were  before  the  fine 
sting  of  the  dramatist's  genius  sent  its  delicious  tor 
ment  into  your  soul.  Now,  how  is  it  with  the  melo 
drama  ?  Why,  you  are  in  the  mud  and  dust  of  the 
earth  all  the  time  you  listen ;  everything  is  intensely 
commonplace,  not  excepting  the  rant  and  the  crimes  ; 
when  a  character  is  stabbed,  or  has  his  brains  blown 
out,  or,  what  is  better,  blows  out  his  brains  with  his 
own  hand,  it  is  simple  murder  or  suicide  you  witness, 
and  there 's  no  enjoyment  in  witnessing  either,  except 
perhaps  the  enjoyment  you  feel  in  thinking  that  the 
wretched  spectacle  has  come  to  an  end. 

And  here  we  have  the  whole  philosophy  of  the  sen 
sational  in  fiction.  You  are,  let  me  suppose,  a  com 
monplace  and  common-sense  man,  sir.  If  I  were  a 
person  without  an  atom  of  genius,  and  yet  were  com 
pelled  by  circumstances,  like  many  of  my  unfortunate 
fellow-creatures,  to  gain  my  living  by  writing  novels,  I 
should  have  you  in  my  eye  while  I  wrote.  I  should  so 
manage  my  story  as  to  galvanize  a  small  part  of  your 
mediocrity  out  of  all  its  relations  to  the  other  parts. 
You  would  still  be  the  commonplace  fellow  you  were 
before,  plus  "  a  sensation."  My  book  would  be  as  artis 
tically  worthless  as  a  police  report,  but  to  you  it  would 
be  a  specimen  of  literature ;  and  I  should  have  the 
inexpressible  satisfaction  of  transferring  money  from 
your  pocket  into  mine,  without  going  through  the  ex 
tremely  tedious  process  of  attempting  to  get  a  fine  sen 
timent  into  your  heart  or  a  new  idea  into  your  head. 

5 


66 


MR.   IIARDHACK  ON  THE   SENSATIONAL 


Indeed,  sir,  you  will  find  that  it  is  your  ordinary, 
matter-of-fact,  bread-and-butter,  practical  people,  rather 
than  your  romantic  and  poetic  ones,  who  are  swindled 
by  sensations.     The  sensational   is  a  revolt  against 
humdrum,  through  the  means  of  a  vulgar  wonder. 
Let  me  tell  you  an  illustrative  story.     Once  upon  a 
time  a  vagabond  pedler  appeared  in  a  secluded  vil 
lage,  and  called  the  people  round  him  by  ringing  a 
big  bell.     When  his  audience  had  become  sufficiently 
large,  he  stopped  ringing  in  order  to  make  this  an 
nouncement  :  "  All  you  young  women  here  with  small 
mouths  will  have  a  husband ! "     The  spinsters  pres 
ent  pursed  and  puckered  up  their  lips,  and  murmured, 
"Dear  me!    what  a  pretty  little  man!"     Then  he 
rung  his  bell  again,  with  still  more  startling  emphasis, 
and  said  in  his  deepest  and  loudest  tones :  "  And  all 
you  young  women  here  with  large  mouths  will  have 
two  !  "     Instantly  the  lips  were  stretched  to  their  ut 
most  width,  and  from  them  all  came  the  wondering 
exclamation,  "  Law !  "     Now  don't  tell  me  that  Miss 
Braddon  hadn't  heard  of  this  story  when  she  wrote 
"  Aurora  Floyd,"  for  it  was  exactly  this  open-mouthed 
wonder  that  she  desired  to  produce  when  she  made 
the  interest  of  her  plot  centre  in  bigamy.     You  know, 
sir,  how  quickly  you,  and  the  rest  of  people  like  you, 
exclaimed,  "  Law  !  " 

The  great  defect,  then,  to  my  notion,  of  the  ro 
mancers  of  rascality  is,  that  there  's  no  romance  in 
them.  They  treat  you  to  hard,  ugly,  "  slangy,"  pro 
saic  fact,  and  throw  in  some  wild  nonsense,  or  brutal 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  67 

ruffianism,  or  cynical  villany,  just  to  give  it  a  coarse 
zest.  Neither  sentiment  nor  imagination  is  addressed. 
The  heroes  commit  just  such  crimes,  and  encounter 
just  such  penalties,  as  you  find  printed  in  the  news 
paper  records  of  the  criminal  courts.  Take  Miss 
Braddon's  "  Birds  of  Prey,"  which  is  one  of  her  latest 
attempts  at  a  sensation, and  notice  how  bare  and  bleak 
is  the  atmosphere  of  the  story,  and  how  commonplace 
as  well  as  bad  is  the  company  she  drags  you  into. 
But  this  photographing  of  poisoners  and  swindlers  is 
not  characterization ;  this  power  to  interest  you  in 
society  where  you  fear  your  pocket  will  be  picked  is 
not  art. 

So  much  for  the  novels  that  please  a  practical  man 
like  you,  sir.  Now,  what  kind  of  author  do  you  sup 
port  when  it  enters  your  brain  that  your  moral  nature 
needs  to  be  braced  ?  Tupper,  of  course  ;  for  you  and 
your  set  have  sent  that  "  Proverbial  Philosophy  "  of 
his  through  a  hundred  editions.  He  has  just  the  com 
bination  of  truism  and  vagueness,  do-me-good  reflec 
tion  and  windy  vastness,  to  fill  your  idea  of  the  moral 
sublime.  And  then  what  a  poet  he  is  in  his  ethics! 
Your  idea  of  the  beautiful  is  of  course  identical  with 
your  notion  of  the  big ;  and  he  goes  over  the  whole 
universe  to  gather  images  of  bigness  for  your  delec 
tation,  doing  a  larger  business  in  mountains,  earth 
quakes,  and  firmaments  than  any  other  metaphor- 
monger  of  the  tday.  Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that, 
even  in  moral  significance,  one  of  Burns's  daisies 
outvalues  all  of  Tupper's  empyreans  ? 


68         Mil.   HARDBACK  ON   THE   SENSATIONAL 

You  must  be  a  patron  of  art,  too  ;  that  is,  you  are 
one  of  those  men  of  dollars  who  are  engaged  in  cor 
rupting  all  the  promising  painters  of  the  land  by  urg 
ing  them  to  the  production  of  panoramic  pictures,  in 
which  there  shall  be  an  almost  photographic  repre 
sentation  of  some  strange  or  big  thing  in  nature,  but 
in  which  all  the  life  and  spirit  of  nature  shall  be  left 
out.  You  value  things  in  art  just  in  proportion  as 
they  recede  from  the  artistic.  Here  is  a  little  picture, 
representing  a  bit  of  grass,  a  cow,  and  a  cottage. 
How  you  turn  up  your  nose  !  There  's  nothing  in  it 
to  create  a  sensation,  I  admit ;  but  there  is  something 
in  it  to  touch  a  sentiment,  if  sentiment  you  had  to 
touch.  The  landscape  is  thoroughly  humanized,  sir, 
and  if  you  had  ever  seen  a  simple  landscape  in  na 
ture,  —  you  've  stared,  no  doubt,  at  thousands,  —  you 
would  feel  the  fact.  But  that  stupendous  picture  of 
mountains  you  can,  of  course,  appreciate.  You  never 
even  stared  at  such  a  phenomenon  as  that,  and  it 
stirs  your  languid  consciousness  with  a  new  sensa 
tion.  But  still  the  painted  bit  of  grass  is  greater,  as 
a  work  of  art,  than  the  painted  chain  of  mountains, 
and  would  be  worth  more  in  money  if  purses  in  our 
day  had  not  unfortunately  lost  their  artistic  percep 
tion.  Did  you  ever  read  Hawthorne's  essay  on  the 
town-pump  of  Salem  ?  Well,  the  town-pump  of  Salem 
is  n't  so  important  a  matter  as  the  battle  of  Water 
loo  ;  but  then,  Hawthorne's  description  of  the  pump 
has  infinitely  more  significance  to  the  intellect  than 
Alison's  description  of  the  battle.  Now,  in  estimating 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  69 

pictures  you  make  the  mistake  of  judging  by  the  sub 
ject  painted,  and  not  by  the  genius  that  paints.  And 
so  far  you  are  a  fool,  sir.  Don't  redden !  The  fools 
in  art  are  the  most  sensible  men  in  business,  and  at 
any  rate  are  in  the  majority. 

A  man  like  you  must  have  a  religion,  too,  and  as 
you  pride  yourself  on  being  a  very  sensible  and  prac 
tical  man,  you  probably  have  a  false  and  bad  one,  sir. 
I  don't  care  where  you  go  to  church  ;  I  know  that,  if 
you  must  have  sensations  in  literature  and  art,  you 
must  have  them  also  in  religion.  Ten  to  one  you  are 
a  reader  of  Dr.  Gumming,  and  are  charmed  with  the 
grandiloquent  way  he  transfixes  Napoleon  II.  on  one 
horn  of  the  dilemma  of  the  Beast,  and  the  certainty 
he  expresses  every  year  that  the  world  is  to  be  de 
stroyed  in  the  next.  No  ?  Why,  you  certainly  cannot 
be  a  Mormon,  though  the  novels  you  read  might 
tempt  you,  if  you  lived  in  Utah,  to  look  with  favor  on 
that  over-connubial  faith.  I  see  how  it  is,  —  you  're 
a  Spiritualist.  You  believe  in  no  miracles  that  don't 
pass  under  your  own  eyes  and  into  your  own  ears. 
You  need  to  have  your  religion  rapped  into  you. 
You  cannot  perceive  the  spiritual  unless  you  have  a 
sensation  of  it.  Now,  mind,  I  don't  doubt  there  are 
many  fine  natures  interested  in  the  phenomena  of 
what  is  called  Spiritualism,  and  expect  to  draw  some 
thing  out  of  it  to  satisfy  their  spiritual  curiosity  or 
aspiration.  But  they  are  not  the  sensation-mongers 
of  the  creed  ;  they  are  not  the  persons  who  exhibit 
the  spirits  of  the  departed  to  an  intelligent  public  at 


70        MR.   HARDBACK   ON   THE   SENSATIONAL 

so  much  a  head.  You,  however,  as  I  repeatedly  have 
had  the  honor  of  reminding  you,  are  an  eminently 
practical  man,  and  of  course  easily  humbugged  on  all 
matters  where  real  spiritual  discernment  comes  into 
play.  Your  notion  of  spiritual  communion  with  the 
dead  is  a  gossip  with  ghosts.  And  such  ghosts  ! 
Why,  your  next  world,  sir,  is  filled  with  nothing  but 
bores  and  dunces,  and  existence  there  would  be 
passed  by  any  reasonable  man  in  one  long,  everlast 
ing  yawn !  You  never  read  Bacon,  or  Milton,  or 
(/banning ;  yet  I  admit  you  have  succeeded  in  mak 
ing  Bacon  and  Milton  and  Channing  talk  to  you  — 
true  table-talk  !  But  then,  Bacon,  freed  from  all  lim 
itations  of  the  flesh,  talks  like  Tupper,  and  Milton 
like  Robert  Montgomery,  and  Channing  like  Mrs. 
Trimmer.  You  have  got  a  spiritual  world,  I  con 
cede,  but  it  is  one  into  which  poets  pass  only  to  be 
deprived  of  their  imagination,  philosophers  of  their 
wisdom,  saints  of  their  sanctity,  and  all  persons  of 
their  brains.  The  "  revelations  "  may  be  very  cred 
itable  for  tables  to  make,  for  tables  are  of  wood,  and 
"  wooden "  is  English  for  bete ;  but  considered  as 
coming  from  disembodied  souls,  they  cast  discredit 
on  the  human  mind  itself.  And  then,  sir,  what  fol 
lies  you  practical  men  slip  into !  'T  is  a  pity  that 
with  all  your  boasted  sense  you  have  n't  some  sense 
of  humor  to  see  the  ludicrous  element  in  your  faith. 
The  mediums  who  allow  you  to  have  a  chat  with  the 
denizens  of  the  spiritual  world,  —  how  inexpressibly 
moderate  they  are  in  their  charges !  You  know  per- 


IN  LITERATURE  AND  LIEE.  71 

fectly  well  that  the  mysteries  of  your  religion  are 
presided  over,  in  many  cases,  by  persons  who  com 
municate  with  the  dead  simply  for  the  purpose  of 
getting  a  living ;  by  showmen  turned  priests  and 
sempstresses  ambitious  to  be  sibyls,  —  priests  who 
are  content  to  exchange  a  revelation  for  a  shilling, 
and  sibyls  who  "  charge  a  pistareen  a  spasm  "  ! 

Well,  it  might  at  least  be  hoped  that  we  should 
have  none  of  these  sensations  in  science.  Never  was 
a  greater  mistake,  sir.  In  the  process  of  being  popu 
larized,  science  is  becoming  melodramatic ;  and  such 
melodramas !  I  don't  know  how  it  is  with  the  real 
investigators,  the  plodding,  conscientious  fellows  who 
are  engaged  in  adding  to  our  knowledge  of  facts  and 
laws.  It  is,  however,  to  be  supposed  that  they  are 
leading  lives  more  or  less  obscure,  arriving  at  limited 
results  by  hard  labor  and  patient  thought,  loving 
truth  more  than  notoriety,  and  untroubled  by  any 
ambition  to  excogitate  a  theory  of  the  universe  out 
of  the  depths  of  their  own  consciousness.  Poor 
devils !  Do  they  suppose  that  a  public,  craving  new 
sensations  and  desirous  of  having  a  slap-dash  state 
ment  of  the  origin  and  development  of  all  things  and 
all  beings,  cares  for  the  little  they  can  tell  about  the 
works  and  ways  of  nature  ?  Probably  if  questioned 
as  to  some  of  the  novel  and  splendid  scientific  theo 
ries  now  in  vogue,  they  would  profess  complete  igno 
rance  of  such  deep  matters.  They  would  answer  the 
querist  somewhat  as  Mr.  Prime  Minister  Pitt  an 
swered  the  lady  who  asked  him  for  the  latest  news. 


72        MR.  HARDBACK  ON  THE  SENSATIONAL 

He  had  n't,  he  said,  read  the  papers,  to  which,  doubt 
less,  she  instantly  referred,  and  found  more  informa 
tion  there  about  Mr.  Pitt's  acts  and  intentions  than 
Mr.  Pitt  himself  could  have  given  her.  The  fact  is, 
the  question  we  now  put  to  every  man  of  science  is 
practically  this :  "  What  is  your  pet  method  of  allow 
ing  God  Almighty  to  build  the  universe  ?"  This,  of 
course,  compels  every  pushing,  self-glorifying,  sensa 
tional  savant  to  bring  out  his  plan  of  creation  for 
our  amusement  and  edification.  We  put  the  various 
schemes  to  vote,  and  the  one  which  has  the  noisiest 
and  most  theatrical  accompaniments  commonly  car 
ries  it.  Now,  I  call  all  this  creating  God  after  man's 
image,  and  the  universe  after  man's  crotchets,  for  I 
find  that  every  plan  is  the  measure  of  the  mind  which 
gets  it  up,  and  is  ridiculous  considered  as  a  measure 
of  Infinite  intelligence.  Even  if  you  leave  the  Deity 
altogether  out  of  your  scheme,  as  an  u  hypothesis 
which  has  now  ceased  to  have  any  practical  interest," 
you  create,  not  a  world,  but  merely  a  sensation.  It  is 
to  be  presumed  that  God  can  get  along  better  with 
out  you  than  you  can  without  him,  and  certainly  his 
existence  is  not  one  of  those  questions  which  can  be 
determined  by  popular  suffrage.  If  the  vote  were  un 
favorable,  I  am  not  without  a  suspicion  that  he  would 
still  contrive  to  keep  his  place  at  the  heart  of  things, 
and  assert  his  reality  in  ways  emphatic  enough.  In 
fact,  the  whole  business  of  building  up  universes,  as 
now  conducted,  is  decidedly  overdone,  sir.  You  get 
nothing  out  of  it  but  words,  and  what,  as  an  old  theo- 


IN   LITERATURE  AND  LIFE.  73 

logian  says,  are  words  "against  Him  who  spoke  worlds, 
—  who  worded  heaven  and  earth  out  of  nothing,  and 
can  when  he  pleases  word  them  into  nothing  again  "  ? 
But  you  may  say  that  in  all  I  assert  about  the 
sensational  in  religion  and  science,  I  am  talking  of 
matters  about  which  I  know  nothing.     There  you  arc 
right,  sir.     But  how  is  it  with  business  ?     Here  is 
something  which  a  man  of  plain  understanding  and 
ordinary  conscience  may  speak  of  without  incurring 
the  charge  of  presumption.     Now  what  is  one  of  the 
most  frightful  characteristics  of  our  present  mode  of 
doing  business?     Is  it  not  the  building  up  of  great 
fortunes  out  of  colossal  robberies  ?     And  the  thing 
is  done  by  a  series  of  sensational  addresses  to  the 
cupidity  of  the  cheated.     High   interest   notoriously 
goes  with   low  security ;   but  we   have,  sir,  in   this 
country,  a  class  of  rogues  who  may  be  called  the 
aristocracy  of  rascaldom,  and  who  get  rich  by  dazzling 
and  astonishing  others  into  the  hope  of  getting  rich. 
They  are  the  contrivers  of  enterprises  which  propose 
to  develop  the  wealth  of  the  country,  but  which  com 
monly  turn  out  to  be  little  more  than  schemes  to 
transfer  wealth  already  realized  from  the  pockets  of 
the  honest  into  those  of  the  knavish.     They  are  the 
financial  footpads  who  lure  simple  people  into  stock 
"  corners,"  and  then  proceed  to  plunder  them.     They 
make  money  so  rapidly,  so  easily,  and  in  such  a  splen 
did  sensational  way,  that  they  corrupt  more  persons 
by  their  example  than  they  ruin  by  their  knaveries. 
As  compared  with  common  rogues,  they  appear  like 


74  THE  SENSATIONAL  IN  LITERATURE. 

Alexander  or  Caesar  as  compared  with  common  thieves 
and  cutthroats.  As  their  wealth  increases,  our  moral 
indignation  at  their  method  of  acquiring  it  diminishes, 
and  at  last  they  steal  so  much  that  we  come  to  look 
on  their  fortunes  as  conquests  rather  than  burglaries. 
Indeed,  their  operations  on  'Change  vie  with  those  of 
military  commanders  in  the  field,  and  are  recorded 
with  similar  admiring  minuteness  of  detail.  They 
are  the  great  sensations  of  the  world  of  trade,  and 
have,  therefore,  more  influence  on  the  imaginations  of 
young  men  just  starting  in  business  than  the  dull 
chronicles  of  the  great  movements  of  legitimate  com 
merce.  Now,  sir,  take  the  universal  American  desire 
to  get  rich,  and  combine  it  with  the  rapid,  rascally 
way  of  getting  rich  now  in  vogue,  and  you  will  find 
you  are  breeding  up  a  race  of  trading  sharks  and 
wolves,  which  will  eventually  devour  us  all.  Honesty 
will  go  altogether  out  of  fashion,  and  respectability 
be  associated  with  defect  of  intellect.  Why,  the  old 
robber  barons  of  the  Middle  Ages,  who  plundered 
sword  in  hand  and  lance  in  rest,  were  more  honest 
than  this  new  aristocracy  of  swindling  millionnaires. 
Do  you  object  that  I  am  getting  into  a  passion  ? 
Why,  sir,  I  have  purchased  dearly  enough  the  right 
to  rail.  Didn't  I  put  my  modest  competence  into 
copper  ?  And  to  recover  my  losses  in  copper,  did  n't 
I  go  madly  into  petroleum  ?  And  did  n't  the  small  sum 
which  petroleum  was  considerate  enough  to  leave  me 
disappear  in  that  last  little  "  turn  "  in  Eric  ? 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

A  CURIOUS  volume  has  recently  been  published  in 
London,  entitled  "  A  Cursory  History  of  Swearing," 
by  Julian  Sharman.  The  author  has  lightly  sketched 
the  annals  of  swearing,  whether  legal  or  irreverent, 
from  the  dawn  of  civilization  to  the  present  day.  He 
has  traced  back  many  English  oaths  that  by  natives 
are  commonly  thought  to  be  original  contributions  to 
the  English  vocabulary  of  imprecation  and  maledic 
tion,  to  French,  Roman,  and  even  Greek  sources.  We 
are  so  defective  in  our  scholarship,  as  far  as  it  relates 
to  the  art  and  practice  of  profanity  in  all  nations  and 
all  times,  that  we  hardly  dare  to  question  some  of  the 
results  of  his  investigations,  because  the  "  comparative 
method,"  however  successful  it  may  be  in  its  appli 
cations  to  various  forms  of  religion,  has  not  yet 
succeeded  in  giving  to  blasphemy  the  precision  and 
sureness  of  a  science. 

It  would  seem  that  the  habit  of  using  oaths  adapts 
itself  to  almost  all  classes  of  character,  from  the  low 
est  nearly  to  the  highest.  The  profane  use  of  sacred 
words  slides  naturally  into  the  expression  of  mere 
animal  rage,  but  it  also  sometimes  bursts  out  in  the 
utterance  of  righteous  wrath  at  fraud,  oppression,  and 
wrong.  The  most  repulsive  phase  of  profanity,  how- 


76  THE   SWEARING  HABIT. 

ever,  is  that  which  is  most  common.  A  man  of 
refinement  cannot  walk  the  streets  of  any  city,  or  the 
lanes  of  any  country  village,  without  having  his  sense 
of  decency  shocked  by  senseless  oaths  and  impreca 
tions,  whether  coming  from  the  lips  of  a  hack-driver 
cursing  his  horses,  or  a  farm  laborer  cursing  his  oxen. 
Any  impediment,  no  matter  how  inevitable,  is  the 
occasion  for  bestowing  upon  it  a  torrent  of  the  dirtiest 
and  most  sacrilegious  terms  that  the  language  con 
tains.  In  some  cases  this  profanity  among  unedu 
cated  men  is  the  result  of  a  very  limited  command  of 
words  to  express  their  feelings  of  impatience,  anger, 
jealousy,  spite,  and  hatred;  in  others,  mere  levity  of 
mental  and  moral  constitution  leads  them  to  adopt 
the  common  and  accredited  forms  of  blasphemy,  with 
out  any  thought  of  their  import ;  but  in  too  many 
cases  the  words  express  the  real  passions  of  coarse, 
hard,  dull,  envious,  and  malignant  natures,  indifferent 
to  religious  or  moral  restraints,  finding  a  certain  de 
light  in  outraging  ordinary  notions  of  decorum,  flat 
tering  themselves  with  the  conceit  that  in  ribaldry 
and  blasphemy  they  have  some  compensation  for  the 
miseries  brought  upon  them  by  poverty  or  vice,  and 
indulging  in  outward  curses  as  a  verbal  relief  to  their 
inward  "  cussedness  "  of  disposition  and  character. 

From  the  houses  of  all  these  classes  issue  a  crowd 
of  children  that  have  breathed  an  atmosphere  of  blas 
phemy  from  their  birth,  who  are  proficient  in  the 
language  of  execration  and  malediction  learned  at  the 
parental  hearth  or  den,  whose  every  third  word  is  an 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  77 

oath,  who  are  educating  themselves  in  that  form  of 
"  self-culture  "  which  may  eventually  lead  them  to  the 
penitentiary  or  the  gallows,  and  who,  in  the  energetic 
words  of  an  old '  divine,  "  seem  not  so  much  born  as 
damned  into  the  world."  It  does  not  require  any 
deep  sense  of  religion  in  the  man  that  threads  his 
way  through  a  group  of  these  infantile  tramps,  these 
childish  ruffians,  —  spawned  on  the  sidewalk  before 
their  wretched  habitations,  —  to  feel  a  thrill  of  horror 
as  he  hears  the  oaths  that  spontaneously  leap  forth  in 
their  little  shrill  voices.  Well,  they  have  been  born 
and  brought  up  in  households  in  which  the  "  wet 
damnation  "  of  bad  whiskey  in  the  stomach  has  found 
its  appropriate  expression  in  the  hot  damnation  of 
execrations  rushing  to  the  lips.  But  then  the  "  pity 
of  it,"  the  horror  of  it,  when  you  think  of  the  desecra 
tion  of  childhood.  Everybody  imbued  with  the  least 
tincture  of  literature  is  aware  of  a  certain  sacredness 
that  ideal  minds,  especially  minds  of  a  poetic  cast, 
attribute  to  children  born  in  happy  circumstances! 
There  is  a  feeling  that  the  child,  in  its  innocence,  is 
nearer  to  its  Maker  than  the  grown-up  man,  brought 
into  direct  contact  and  conflict  with  the  practical  facts 
of  life.  If  we  disregard  Wordsworth's  sublime  ode, 
"Intimations  of  Immortality,  from  Recollections  of 
Early  Childhood,"  we  still  must  have  some  respect 
for  the  emotion  that  uplifts  the  imagination  and  affec 
tions  of  such  an  apparent  worldling  as  Thomas  Moore, 
in  his  exquisite  representation  of  the  child  in  "  Para 
dise  and  the  Peri."  What  a  picture  is  that  of  the 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

hardened  ruffian,  as  he  gazes  on  the  innocent  boy 
playing  among  the  roses  of  the  vale  of  Baalbec  ! 
Then,  as  he  hears  it,— 

"...  the  vesper  call  to  prayer, 

As  slow  the  orb  of  daylight  sets, 
Is  rising  sweetly  on  the  air, 

From  Syria's  thousand  minarets. 
The  boy  has  started  from  the  bed 
Of  flowers,  where  he  had  laid  his  head, 
Arid  down  upon  the  fragrant  sod 

Kneels  with  his  forehead  to  the  South, 
Lisping  the  eternal  name  of  God, 

From  Purity's  own  cherub  mouth." 

Now  contrast  this  with  the  way  "  the  eternal  name 
of  God  "  is  bandied  about  by  the  reckless  urchins  and 
the  unsexed  girls  that  line  the  streets  to  every  rail 
road  station  in  every  city  in  the  United  States.  The 
merely  respectable  man  shudders  as  he  passes  by 
these  outcasts,  and  congratulates  himself,  perhaps, 
that  he  has  hidden  his  offspring  in  some  country 
nook,  where  such  words  are  unheard.  But  he  is  mis 
taken.  The  disease  of  profanity  is  infectious.  It 
spreads  like  the  measles,  the  scarlet  fever,  and  diph 
theria  ;  and  ten  miles  of  space  cannot  preserve  his 
own  little  innocents  from  the  contagion.  The  great 
mystery  of  life,  if  considered  in  the  light  of  what  is 
called  God's  Providence,  is  the  solidarity,  the  essen 
tial  union,  of  mankind,  so  that  every  wickedness  and 
corruption  in  the  low  and  degraded  populations  mount 
up  into  the  higher  and  more  educated  ranks,  just  in 
proportion  as  the  higher  in  rank,  wealth,  and  cultiva- 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  79 

tion  neglect  the  lower  sunk  in  poverty,  ignorance,  and 
vice.  -There  is  no  apparent  reason  why  their  offspring 
should  have  a  share  in  the  contamination  of  the  little 
outcasts  they  shrink  from  in  the  streets.  The  Sunday- 
school,  the  genial  home,  the  academy,  the  college,  the 
exclusive  social  position  they  enjoy,  —  these  will  keep 
them  from  the  dismal  fate  of  the  wretched  "  lowest 
classes  "  they  pity  but  make  only  ineffectual  attempts 
to  raise.  What  is  the  result  ?  It  is  seen  almost  daily 
in  funerals,  where  pious  fathers  and  mothers,  who 
have  worked  and  prayed  to  shield  their  children  from 
the  talk  of  the  profane  and  the  practice  of  the  vicious, 
have  vainly  striven,  in  scrutinizing  the  features  of 
their  dead  and  dishonored  sons,  to  call  back  in 
memory  "  the  smile  of  cradled  innocence  on  the  lips 
of  the  coffined  reprobate."  The  tragedy  of  life  and 
death  is  there.  You  should  have  known  that  you 
cannot  preserve  your  own  protected  children  from 
contamination,  unless  you  labor  to  protect  the  ne 
glected  children  of  improvidence,  carelessness,  and 
vice  from  what  seems  to  be  their  inevitable  doom. 
Self-protection,  dissociated  from  mutual  protection,  is 
the  imminent  danger  that  our  present  civilization  is 
called  upon  to  meet. 

So  far  the  practice  of  swearing  has  been  condemned 
on  what  the  reader  might  call  religious  or  sentimental 
objections.  Still,  even  those  who  ignore  or  deny  the 
existence  of  God,  or  have  only  a  faint  traditional 
sense  of  religious  obligation,  are  impelled  by  their 
common  sense  and  regard  for  common  decency  to 


80  THE  SWEARING  HxlBIT. 

stigmatize  profanity  as  at  least  vulgar.  The  conven 
tional  gentleman,  though  fifty  or  eighty  years  ago  he 
might  consider  an  oath  as  an  occasional  or  frequent 
adornment  of  his  conversation  in  all  societies,  no\v 
reserves  it  for  "  gentlemen  "  alone,  and  is  inclined  to 
deem  it  slightly  improper  in  the  society  of  ladies. 
The  improvement  has  been  gradual,  but  it  is  still 
growing,  and  in  ordinary  society  blasphemy  is  ban 
ished  from  the  polite  tattle  and  prattle  of  good  com 
pany,  on  the  ground  that  it  indicates  a  coarse  nature, 
or  a  very  limited  command  of  the  resources  of  the 
English  language  to  express  sterility  of  mind  and 
vacuity  of  heart. 

But  there  is  a  coarse  fibre  in  the  physical  and 
moral  constitution  of  the  English  race,  which  was 
early  indicated  by  its  habit  of  profane  swearing. 
Curses  were  accepted  as  the  signs  of  manliness.  The 
author  whom  we  have  taken  as  our  guide  makes  a 
desperate  attempt  to  defend  his  countrymen  in  this 
respect.  He  shows  that  a  profane  use  of  sacred 
words  is  common  to  all  races  and  nations,  barbaric 
as  well  as  half  civilized.  This  fact  must  be  admitted ; 
but  in  regard  to  modern  times  one  must  think  that 
the  English  have  excelled  all  other  nations  in  the 
meaning  and  emphasis  they  have  put  into  their  words. 
The  Latin  races  swear  more  constantly  and  more 
volubly  than  their  Teutonic  brethren,  but  their  exe 
crations  are  trivial  in  comparison  with  the  deep- 
mouthed  and  fierce-hearted  oaths  of  the  Anglo-Saxon 
people.  The  imprecations  of  the  Italian,  especially, 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  81 

seem  to  be  mere  outbursts  of  physical  irritation, 
without  any  solid  purpose  in  them ;  but  in  the  ordi 
nary  English  soldier  and  suilor  profanity  expresses 
character.  It  is  needless  to  go  farther  back  than  the 
invasion  of  France  in  the  fifteenth  century.  The 
English  were  called  by  the  French  peasants,  who  did 
not  understand  their  language,  "the  Goddams."  The 
heroes  of  Agincourt  were  thus  named,  after  their  fa 
vorite  oath.  When,  afterward,  the  last  step  to  make 
France  an  English  province,  or  to  make  England  a 
province  of  France,  was  thwarted  by  the  genius  and 
faith  of  Joan  of  Arc,  it  is  curious  that  this  wonderful 
peasant-girl  was  accustomed  to  name  the  English,  as 
distinguished  from  the  French,  "  the  Goddams."  This 
is  the  more  to  be  noticed  because  she  had  an  utter 
horror  of  profanity.  When  she  took  command  of  the 
six  thousand  soldiers  that,  under  her  lead,  threw 
themselves  into  Orleans,  she  first  required  that  the 
profane  and  dissolute  French  men-at-arms  who 
marched  under  her  sacred  banner  should  entirely 
banish  from  their  minds,  as  well  as  from  their  lips, 
their  copious  stores  of  ribaldry  and  blasphemy.  La 
Hire,  one  of  the  bravest  and  coarsest  of  her  captains, 
growlingly  consented  to  talk  like  a  decent  human 
being.  Yet  she  always  spoke  of  the  English  by  the 
name  they  had  doubtless  acquired  by  the  profusion 
with  which  they  lavished  their  national  imprecation 
on  their  enemies.  Her  knowledge  of  the  English 
language  was  probably  confined  to  this  single  phrase. 
When  she  was  preparing  her  assault  on  one  of  the 

6 


82  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

strongest  forts  that  the  English  had  erected  against 
Orleans,  she  was  asked  by  a  French  soldier  to  partake 
of  a  breakfast  of  fish  before  she  set  out  on  her  haz 
ardous  expedition.  "  In  the  name  of  God,"  she  ex 
claimed,  "  it  shall  not  be  eaten  till  supper,  by  which 
time  we  shall  return  by  way  of  the  bridge,  and  I  will 
bring  you  back  a  Goddam  to  eat  it  with."  And  in 
her  lonely  dungeon,  after  she  had  been  captured  and 
imprisoned,  she  proudly  said  to  the  earls  of  Warwick 
and  Stafford,  "  You  think  when  you  have  slain  me 
you  will  conquer  France ;  but  that  you  will  never  do. 
No  !  although  there  were  one  hundred  thousand  more 
Goddams  in  this  land  than  there  are  now." 

English  culture,  as  we  have  said,  may  have  ban 
ished  from  polite  society  the  favorite  oath  of  the 
English  race;  but  the  rough,  stout  soldiers,  sailors, 
and  pioneers  of  the  race  have  carried  the  name  that 
Joan  of  Arc  bestowed  upon  them  in  the  fifteenth 
century,  to  every  savage  and  civilized  clime  in  which 
they  have  appeared.  It  is  four  hundred  years  since 
their  distinguishing  imprecation  was  heard  by  Joan 
on  the  walls  of  Orleans ;  yet  it  is  uttered  now  with 
equal  emphasis  on  our  own  Western  plains,  by  those 
pioneers  that  use,  or  rather  misuse,  the  English  tongue. 
After  New  Mexico  was  organized  as  a  Territory  of  the 
United  States,  a  gentleman  of  our  acquaintance  was 
sent  there  to  occupy  an  official  position.  When  he 
arrived  at  the  point  from  which  the  wagon-train  of 
oxen  and  mules  was  to  set  forth  for  the  place  of  his 
future  residence,  he  noticed  that  recent  rains  had 


THE  SWEARING   HABIT.  83 

made  the  miserable  roads  seemingly  impassable.  He 
asked  a  wretched-looking  Indian  savage,  lounging 
about  the  station,  if  he  thought  the  train  would  get 
through.  "  The  ye-hocs  may,"  he  answered,  "  but  I 
don't  believe  the  Goddams  will."  These  terms  he  con 
sidered  the  English  names  of  the  animals  he  pointed 
out;  for  he  had  never  heard  their  drivers  mention 
them  as  oxen  and  mules,  but  he  so  understood  their 
exclamations  and  execrations  as  to  discriminate  be 
tween  the  designation  given  to  the  patient  and  for 
bearing  ox,  and  that  plentifully  bestowed  upon  the 
obstinate  and  resisting  mule.  In  fact,  he  had  only 
taken  his  first  lesson  in  the  English  language,  as 
taught  by  our  boasted  pioneers  of  civilization. 

Mr.  Sharman  (if  that  be  his  real  name)  attempts  to 
trace  the  oath  to  a  French  source.  He  declares  that 
at  the  time  of  Joan  of  Arc,  "  dame  Dicu  !  "  was  com 
mon  on  the  lips  of  Frenchmen,  that  the  word  Dieu 
could  not  be  pronounced  by  the  rough  Englishmen, 
and  "  that  they  were  accordingly  forced  to  anglicize 
it  to  fit  it  to  the  remainder  of  the  oath ; "  but  this 
derivation  fails,  because  it  is  easy  to  prove  that  the 
English  never  were  driven  to  borrow  such  sulphurous 
expletives  from  any  nation  they  invaded.  Their 
"  morning  drum-beat "  does  not  more  certainly  circle 
the  earth  daily  with  their  martial  airs  than  with  their 
martial  blasphemies.  The  French  wits  and  satirists 
have  never  wearied  of  fastening  anew  on  the  English 
man  the  name  by  which  he  was  called  four  centuries 
ago.  Voltaire,  in  his  mock-heroic  poem  of  "  La  Pu- 


84  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

celle,"  makes  Talbot  die,  after  a  hard  struggle,  with  an 
intense  utterance  of  the  favorite  English  malediction 
foaming  from  his  lips.  Beaumarchais,  in  the  "  Mariage 
de  Figaro,"  laughingly  extols  the  beauty  and  compact 
ness  of  the  English  language ;  you  only  need,  he  says, 
one  expression  (quoting  that  we  have  so  often  men 
tioned),  and  it  will  go  a  great  ways.  There  are  other 
words,  he  adds,  used  occasionally  by  the  English  in 
conversation,  but  the  substance  and  depth  of  the  lan 
guage  is  in  that  magical  oath.  In  1770,  Lord  Hailes 
gives  it  as  his  experience,  that  in  Holland,  when  the 
children  saw  any  English  people  they  exclaimed, 
"There  come  the ;"  and  that  the  Portu 
guese,  when  they  see  an  English  sailor,  accost  him 
with,  "  How  do  you  do,  Jack,  dash  you  ?  "  Captain 
Hall,  many  years  ago,  told  us  that  when  a  Sandwich 
Islander  wished  to  propitiate  a  British  crew,  he  ex 
hibited  his  knowledge  of  the  language  they  spoke  by 
exclaiming,  "  Very  glad  see  you  !  Dash  your  eyes  ! 

me  like  English  very  much.     Devilish  hot,  sir ! 

."     "We  have  a  faint  remembrance  of  a  French 

comedy,  written  about  a  century  and  a  half  ago,  in 
which  a  French  imitator  of  English  manners  has  con 
trived  to  express  his  Anglican  tendencies  by  swear 
ing,  "  Dieu-moi-dam."  In  1789  a  farce  was  played  in 
Paris,  in  which  one  Williams  enters  a  cabaret,  with 
the  oath  that  betrayed  his  nationality.  The  person 
addressed  repeats  the  curse,  and  instantly  adds, 
"  Monsieur  est  Anglais  apparemment."  Indeed,  this 
vice  of  profanity  is  so  common  in  the  English  race 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  85 

that  historians  of  manners,  all  playwrights  and  novel 
ists,  have  emphasized  it.  From  the  time  of  Henry 
VIII.  to  the  time  of  George  IV.  it  raged  with  the 
virulence  of  an  epidemic.  As  the  English  race  and 
language  seem  bound  to  possess  the  greater  part  of 
the  earth,  it  is  a  pity  that  British  soldiers  and  sailors 
should  have  heretofore  preceded  its  missionaries  in 
the  conquest  of  savage  or  what  are  called  pagan  na 
tions.  It  is  said  that  there  are  certain  barbarians  in 
whose  limited  dialects  every  word  is  associated  with 
some  obscene  or  profane  idea,  and  that  the  missionary 
is  utterly  unable  to  convey  to  them  a  spiritual  truth 
or  dogma,  because  the  Bible,  translated  into  their 
language,  becomes  a  support  to  their  degeneration, 
rather  than  affords  an  impulse  to  their  regeneration. 
It  is  probable  that  the  civilized  people  that  first  meet 
with  them  for  the  purpose  of  conquest  or  trade,  only 
add  new  words  to  their  restricted  resources  of  ex 
pression  in  native  obscenity  and  profanity.  It  is  to 
be  regretted  that  the  great  colonizing  enterprises  of 
Britain,  if  we  except  the  persecuted  nonconformists 
that  settled  New  England,  carried  English  coarseness 
and  brutality  and  profanity  to  the  same  shores  to 
which  they  introduced  British  civilization.  How 
could  the  followers  of  Drake,  Raleigh,  and  Cavendish 
regard  blasphemy  as  a  serious  offence,  when  they 
must  have  known  that  their  maiden  queen,  the  hot- 
tempered,  despotic  Elizabeth,  swore  as  lustily  as  they 
did  ?  Even  grave  historians  tell  us  of  a  bishop  who, 
when  he  muttered  some  reluctance  to  obey,  in  one 


83  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

instance,  her  imperative  command,  was  stunned  by 

her  passionate  answer :  "  Do  it,  or,  by  ,  I  will 

unfrock  you !  " 

In  noting  the  connection  of  British  profanity  with 
British  colonization,  the  disastrous  attempt  of  the 
Scotch  to  colonize  the  Isthmus  of  Daricn  must  not 
be  overlooked.  The  expedition  carried  a  goodly  com 
pany  of  clergymen  to  convert  the  heathen  natives, 
and  Christianity  was  intended  to  consecrate  com 
merce.  The  colony  failed  as  miserably  in  its  theo 
logical  as  in  its  commercial  aim  ;  and  the  historian 
tells  us  that  "  the  colonists  left  behind  them  no  mark 
that  baptized  men  had  set  foot  on  Darien,  except  a 
few  Anglo-Saxon  curses,  which,  having  been  uttered 
more  frequently  and  with  greater  energy  than  any 
other  words  in  our  language,  had  caught  the  ear  and 
been  retained  in  the  memory  of  the  native  population 
of  the  Isthmus." 

But  to  return.  Through  the  reigns  of  James  I.  and 
Charles  I.,  the  habit  of  swearing  continued  in  the 
higher  as  well  as  the  lower  classes.  It  was  checked 
somewhat  in  the  despotic  domination  of  the  Puritan 
Commonwealth,  but  broke  out  again,  at  the  restora 
tion  of  Charles  II.,  with  a  fury  that  nothing  could 
withstand.  Macaulay  tells  us  that  in  the  reaction 
from  the  austerity  of  the  Commonwealth  the  genera 
tion  that  succeeded  delighted  in  doing  and  saying 
whatever  would  most  shock  their  defeated  enemies. 
As  the  Puritan  "  never  opened  his  mouth  except 
in  Scriptural  phrase,  the  new  breed  of  wits  and  fine 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  87 

gentlemen  never  opened  their  mouths  without  utter 
ing  ribaldry  of  which  a  porter  would  now  be  ashamed, 
and  without  calling  on  their  Maker  to  curse  them, 
sink  them,  confound  them,  blast  them,  and  damn 
them." 

"  The  Glorious  Revolution  of  1688,"  whatever  it  did 
for  constitutional  liberty,  did  not  do  much  to  make 
profanity  unfashionable.  Lawrence  Hyde,  Earl  of 
Rochester,  did  not  swear  in  his  cups  more  lustily 
than  Sir  Robert  Walpole,  the  astute  Whig  Premier, 
in  his  orgies  at  his  country  seat.  Pelham,  and  his 
brother,  the  Duke  of  Newcastle,  afterward  the  heads 
of  the  great  Whig  connection,  were  not  famous  for 
profanity,  neither  was  Chatham ;  but  the  plays  of  the 
period,  and  the  novels  of  Fielding  and  Smollett,  prove 
that  profanity  was  quite  an  ordinary  exercise  of  the 
English  lungs.  To  "  swear  like  a  lord  "  became,  with 
the  rustic  as  well  as  the  city  populace,  as  much  an 
object  of  admiring  wonder,  as  "  to  get  as  drunk  as  a 
lord."  Even  women  of  rank  did  not  hesitate  to  imi 
tate — of  course,  at  a  respectful  distance,  befitting  their 
inferior  sex  —  the  more  masculine  profanity  of  the 
acknowledged  lords  of  creation.  It  is  difficult  to  say 
how  long  they  availed  themselves  of  their  precious 
privilege.  Sarah,  Duchess  of  Marlborough,  who  did 
not  die  — much  to  the  regret  of  her  relatives— until 
1744,  once  called  at  the  house  of  an  eminent  judge 
on  business.  Learning  from  the  footman  that  he  was 
not  at  home,  the  old  harridan  departed,  in  one  of  her 
furious  fits  of  irritation,  without  condescending  to 


88  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

mention  her  august  title.  The  servant,  when  ques 
tioned  by  the  judge  on  his  return  to  the  house  as  to 
the  name  of  his  visitor,  could  only  answer  that  she 
had  not  mentioned  her  name,  but  that  "  she  swore 
like  a  lady  of  quality." 

There  is,  unhappily,  a  class  of  men  who,  in  differ 
ent  degrees  of  depravity,  seem  possessed  by  the  devil. 
They  experience  a  strange  delight  in  exalting  their 
own  wills  above  all  moral  law.  They  are  sufficient 
to  themselves.  They  despise  what  they  call  the  poor 
weaklings  of  superstition,  who  are  ruled  by  such  ab 
ject  sentiments  as  wonder,  reverence,  and  awe.  They 
disbelieve  in  them  because  they  have  never  felt  them. 
They  are  under  the  delusion  of  a  moral  and  mental 
color-blindness,  and  have  no  vision  of  spiritual  facts 
that  are  plain  to  humbler  mortals.  Tt  is  difficult  to 
assert  that  they  have  souls,  either  to  be  saved  or  to  be 
exposed  to  the  other  alternative ;  but  if  beneath  the 
thick  scum  of  evil  experience  that  has  settled  on  their 
minds  and  characters  there  remains  a  faint,  unextin- 
guished  spark  of  immortal  fire,  their  souls  are  of  a 
kind  that  "  rot  half  a  grain  a  day,"  and  promise  to 
go  on  rotting  until  they  reach  the  appointed  term 
of  their  earthly  lives.  These  creatures  find  a  strange 
pleasure  in  showing  their  superiority  to  common  folk, 
by  disgusting  all  decent  people  whose  ears  unfortu 
nately  come  within  reach  of  their  tongues,  by  their 
ribaldry,  and  shocking  by  their  blasphemy  all  devout 
people  that  are  placed  in  the  same  predicament.  The 
world  has  been  sufficiently  sermonized  on  the  sin  of 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  89 

self-righteousness ;  but  neither  preacher  nor  satirist 
seems  to  have  emphasized  the  opposite  vice,  namely, 
self-unrighteousness,  though  it  is  but  too  common. 
The  self-righteous  man  is  ever  self-complacent  when 
he  views  the  multitude  of  trembling  sinners  that  have 
not,  as  he  has,  a  through  ticket  to  pass  from  the  tomb 
to  the  Celestial  Kingdom,  signed  by  the  proper  au 
thority  ;  the  self-unrighteous  man,  scorning  all  con 
sideration  of  the  possible  life  beyond  the  grave,  laughs 
at  the  fears  of  those  whose  cry  is,  "  What  shall  I  do 
to  be  saved  ? "  and  by  his  conduct  and  conversation 
seems  to  be  eager  to  mock  the  supplication  of  peni 
tent  hearts  by  defiantly  substituting  for  it  that  other 
question,  "  What  shall  I  do  to  be  damned  ? " 

It  is  curious  how  many  men  of  eminent  ability,  or 
eminent  frivolity,  have  asserted  their  self-unrighteous 
ness  in  this  fashion.  The  frivolous  do  it  to  astonish 
their  fellow-coxcombs  by  a  display  of  what  they  call 
courage,  with  probably  little  deeper  feeling  than  that 
of  the  good  boy,  brought  up  to  reverence  holy  things 
on  the  mechanical  method  adopted  by  his  self-right 
eous  parents,  who  accordingly  hated  in  his  heart  all 
the  uncomprehended  words  they  had  lodged,  by  a  ma 
chine  process,  in  his  memory,  and  who  sulkingly  con 
fided  his  secret  scepticism  to  a  companion  of  his  own 
age  and  degree  of  theological  culture,  as  they  returned 
one  Sunday  from  church,  in  the  words  that  he  "  didn't 
care  for  God,  nor  Christ,  nor  any  of  'em  ! "  But  this 
desecration  of  what  is  essentially  sacred  is  connected, 
even  in  the  most  frivolous  natures,  with  a  certain  per- 


90  THE   SWEARING  HABIT. 

versity,  which  Edgar  Poe  thought,  or  said  he  thought, 
inherent  in  the  constitution  of  human  beings.  It  cer 
tainly  seemed  in  him  to  be  inherent ;  it  doubtless  in 
many  cases  comes,  like  the  gout  or  any  other  trans 
mitted  physical  disease,  by  inheritance ;  but  as  to 
the  mass  of  human  beings  perversity  is  generally  the 
perversion  of  qualities  originally  intended  for  good. 
When  it  appears  in  shallow  minds  and  hearts,  this 
perversity  is  expressed  in  the  fundamental  dogma  of 
profligacy,  that  vice  and  profanity  confer  distinction. 
Consequently,  a  rivalry  springs  up  among  the  pro 
fessors  of  this  school  of  licentiousness  and  blasphemy, 
and  lies  are  told  by  these  aspirants  for  an  infamous 
reputation,  not  for  the  purpose  of  denying  the  crimes 
against  society  that  they  have  actually  committed,  but 
for  the  purpose  of  circulating  monstrous  rumors  of 
their  success  in  blasting  the  reputations  of  virtuous 
wives  whom  they  know  only  by  name,  and  of  un 
spotted  maidens  they  may  have  chanced  to  meet  in 
a  drawing-room.  So  great  a  poet  as  Byron  stooped 
to  this  ignoble  ambition.  The  published  "  Memoirs  " 
that  relate  to  the  social  manners  and  ethics  of  both 
France  and  England  during  the  last  and  the  first  quar 
ter  of  the  present  century,  are  full  of  details  respecting 
this  detestable  race  of  shallow-hearted,  feather-brained, 
and  thoroughly  depraved  coxcombs.  The  creatures 
still  survive,  often  in  the  highest  circles  of  fashion 
able  society.  To  do  them  justice,  it  must  be  admitted 
that  they  are  commonly  physically  brave.  The  Eng 
lish  Guards,  at  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  maintained 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  91 

their  reputation  for  valor  better  than  the  Imperial 
Guard  that  "  dies  but  never  surrenders ; "  and  their 
gallantry  forced  from  Wellington  the  curt  remark, 
"  The  puppies  fight  well."  In  the  Crimean  War  the 
"dandy"  officers  exhibited  the  same  English  pluck, 
with,  we  trust,  a  higher  regard  for  morality. 

It  may  be   said   that  those  who   have  contracted 
the  habit  of  using  oaths  to  give  force,  emphasis,  or 
audacity  to  their  conversation,  are  roughly  divisible 
into  two  classes,  —  the  reclaimable  and  the  irreclaim 
able.     The  first  class  is  composed  of  men  who  swear 
from  the  surface  and  not  from  the  substance  of  their 
minds ;  who,  provided  they  have  a  sufficiently  strong 
motive,  can  cure  themselves  of  the  habit,  as  they  can 
cure  themselves  of  the  habit  of  smoking  or  drinking, 
by  means  of  reflection  and  volition.     It  is  difficult, 
however,  to  rouse  careless  and  heedless  natures  to  a 
sense  of  the  folly  and  indecorum,  not  to  say  the  wick 
edness,  of  their  flippant  blasphemies.     Charles  Lamb, 
when  once  asked  why  he  did  not  give  up  the  practice 
of  smoking,  humorously  replied,  "  Because  I  cannot 
find  an  equivalent  vice."     It  is  in  some  such  light 
way  that  practitioners  in  swearing  are  apt  to  evade 
the  remonstrances  of  friends  whose  sense  of  decency 
their  easy  and  voluble  stream  of  profanity  disgusts 
or  shocks.     Still,  these  men  are  reclaimable,  though 
after  conquering  the  habit  they  may  occasionally  show 
that  they  once  allowed  themselves  to  be  conquered  by 
it.     Thus,  we  knew  a  man  of  talent  and  energy  who 
ha<J  cultivated  the  art  of  swearing  from  his  youth 


92  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

upward,  but  who,  in  mature  age,  had  married,  had  be 
come  a  father,  and  had  to  some  degree  "  experienced  " 
religion.  Still,  in  moments  of  high  emotion,  when  he 
was  off  his  guard,  an  oath  would  slip  into  the  begin 
ning  of  a  sentence  that  ended  in  something  like  a 
prayer.  Thus,  on  one  occasion,  when  he  was  dilating 
to  us  on  the  theme  of  his  happiness  in  his  new  life,  he 

rapturously  exclaimed,  "  By !  my  friend,  when  I 

look  at  that  child  of  mine,  and  think  of  what  he  may 
become  to  me,  I  feel  thankful  to  God  that  he  has 
vouchsafed  to  me  such  a  blessing ! " 

The  second  class  of  swearers  we  have  called  the  ir 
reclaimable,  for  the  reason  that  profanity  has  become 
a  part  of  their  organism.  About  thirty  years  ago  an 
Englishman,  who  had  been  lessee  and  manager  of 
Drury  Lane  Theatre,  and  in  that  capacity  had  had  an 
altercation  with  Macready  which  resulted  in  a  prose 
cution  against  the  actor  for  a  personal  assault,  came  to 
the  United  States  for  the  purpose  of  lecturing  on  the 
stage.  His  memory  was  full  of  recollections  of  distin 
guished  actors,  and  his  power  of  mimicking  their  great 
"  points  "  was  remarkable.  His  imitations  of  the  elder 
Kean  were  specially  notable,  in  respect  both  to  voice 
and  gesture.  But  his  seemingly  unconscious  profanity 
astonished  even  those  whose  oaths  were  about  one  in 
ten  or  fifteen  of  the  words  they  used  in  familiar  con 
versation.  He  swore  as  instinctively  as  he  breathed. 
At  a  dinner  to  which  he  had  been  invited,  the  present 
writer  sat  on  the  right  side  of  him  and  a  clergyman 
on  the  left.  The  latter  was  introduced  to  him  as 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  93 

Doctor  C.  Mr.  B.  began  to  talk  fluently  of  his  expe 
rience  with  actors  and  of  the  drama,  sprinkling  his 
sprightly  narratives  with  so  many  unnecessary  exple 
tives  that  his  right-hand  neighbor  had  to  whisper  to 
him  that  Doctor  C.  was  not  a  doctor  of  medicine,  but 
a  doctor  of  divinity.  The  scene  that  ensued  was  su 
premely  ludicrous.  Mr.  B.  turned,  with  extreme  earn 
estness  and  politeness,  to  the  clergyman,  professed  his 
great  regard  for  "  the  cloth,"  dashed  his  eyes,  body, 
and  soul  to  everlasting  perdition,  declared  if  he  had 
known  the  profession  of  his  auditor  he  would  not  have 
used  such  words  as  might  be  offensive  to  his  sacer 
dotal  ears,  and  in  three  minutes  contrived  to  condense 
into  his  apology  more  blasphemies  than  he  poured 
forth  in  the  original  offence.  Everybody  present  must 
have  been  impressed  with  the  fact  that  in  him,  as  in 
many  similar  swearers,  profanity  was  a  secretion  in 
the  throat. 

We  have  only  space  to  devote  a  little  consid 
eration  to  what  may  be  called  executive  swearing. 
Though  this  may  be  more  or  less  effective  as  a  means 
of  menace  and  intimidation,  as  it  comes  from  the 
mouths  of  resolute,  aggressive,  strong-minded,  coarse 
grained  men,  who  are  habitual  swearers,  it  has  still 
the  greatest  power  when  occasionally  employed  by  the 
strict  economists  of  the  language  of  profanity.  The 
rarity  of  an  oath  increases  its  force.  General  Lee 
felt  the  truth  of  this  when  Washington,  at  the  battle 
of  Monmouth,  discharged  upon  him  a  series  of  male 
dictions  for  his  misconduct,  which  owed  their  smiting 


04  THE   SWEARING  HABIT. 

force  to  the  fact  that  he  had  been  selected  from  all  the 
subordinate  generals  of  the  Revolutionary  army  to  call 
forth  such  unaccustomed  words  from  the  lips  of  the 
general-iii -chief.  "  Beware,"  says  the  poet,  "  beware 
the  anger  of  a  patient  man."  Fortitude  and  self-com 
mand  are  not  virtues  of  cold  natures,  but  are  really 
powers  fused  into  intrepid  character  by  an  inward  fire, 
the  external  expression  of  which  is  sternly  repressed  ; 
but  there  are  occasions  in  war  —  though  General 
Grant  seems  never  under  any  circumstances  to  have 
been  provoked  into  profanity — when  folly,  stupidity, 
disobedience  to  orders,  or  treachery,  is  so  plain  that 
the  hidden  heat  in  the  heart  of  the  commander  rends, 
for  a  time,  all  obstructions  to  its  seemingly  profane 
utterance,  and  blazes  out  in  words  that  strike  the  per 
son  at  whom  they  are  aimed  with  the  effect  of  blows. 
In  the  lives  of  most  eminent  men,  specially  distin 
guished  for  their  fortitude,  we  notice  these  infrequent 
escapes  of  moral  wrath,  though  the  terms  in  which 
they  are  clothed  may  be  such  as  disgust  us  in  the 
language  of  a  pot-house  belcher  of  oaths.  Shaks- 
peare,  who  has  touched  almost  every  phase  of  human 
character,  has  not  overlooked  these  occasional  out 
bursts  of  passion  in  men  that  are  noted  for  coolness, 
self-possession,  and  self-command.  Take  this  passage 
from  the  third  act  of  "  Othello  "  :  — 

"  lago.    Is  my  lord  angry  1 

Emilia.  He  went  hence  but  now, 

And  certainly  in  strange  unquietness. 

lago.   Can  he  be  angry  ?     I  have  seen  the  cannon, 
When  it  hath  blown  his  ranks  into  the  air, 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  95 

And,  like  the  devil,  from  his  very  arm 
Puffed  his  own  brother  :  and  can  he  be  angry  ? 
Something  of  moment  then  ;  I  will  go  meet  him  ; 
There  's  matter  in 't  indeed,  if  he  be  angry." 

This  parsimony  in  the  use  of  profane  expressions  is 
specially  noticeable  in  men  of  business,  when  the  mer 
chant  or  banker  is  a  man  of  integrity  and  of  high  busi 
ness  capacity.     There  is,  of  course,  a  large  number 
of  traders  whose  natures  are  irritable,  petulant,  and 
passionate,  who  seize  every  opportunity   to   exercise 
their   proficiency  in  profanity ;   who   swear  jocosely 
when  they  have  made  a  good  bargain,  and  fiercely 
when  they  have  made  a  bad  one ;   who  pester  the  ears 
of  their  clerks  and  shopmen  from  morning  to  night 
with   their   resounding   execrations,  and   impartially 
curse  their  Maker  whether  they  have  failed  or  suc 
ceeded  in  cheating  others.     Such  shops  and  counting- 
houses  are  kindergartens  for  the  practical  teaching  of 
blasphemy.     But  able  men  of  business  rarely  indulge 
in  this  license  of  the  tongue.     A  number  of  years  ago 
we  knew  intimately  a  Boston  banker  of  exceptional 
capacity,  who  in  all  conditions  of  the  money-market, 
especially  in  periods  of  financial  panic,  was  ever  im- 
perturbably  calm.     It  happened  that  on  one  occasion 
he  had  joined  in  a  moderately  successful  speculation 
with  an  outside  operator,  and  his  partner  for  the  time 
was  to  come  at  ten  o'clock  in  the  forenoon  to  claim 
his  share  of  the  profits.     At  nine  o'clock  the  banker 
had  placed  in  his  hands  proofs  that  the  other  party 
had  played  false  in  the  whole  transaction.    The  would- 


96  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

be  swindler  entered  the  office  of  him  whom  he  con 
sidered  his  dupe,  in  an  easy,  confident  manner.  The 
banker  looked  not  so  much  at  as  through  him,  sub 
jected  him  to  a  few  stern,  searching  questions,  and 
the  scamp's  confused  and  hesitating  answers  con 
firmed  his  guilt.  Then  came  out  the  hoarded  wrath 
of  the  banker,  in  terms  that  seemed  to  force  their 
way  into  the  very  soul  of  the  detected  trickster.  His 
fit  reply  would  have  been,  in  the  words  of  an  old 
English  dramatist, — 

"  I  have  endured  you  with  an  ear  of  fire  ; 
Your  tongue  has  struck  hot  irons  on  my  face  !  " 

But  failing  in  these  forcible  expressions,  which  so 
well  indicated  the  appearance  of  his  ears  and  cheeks, 
he  stumbled  down  the  office  stairs  with  the  gait  of  a 
man  consciously  bound  for  the  place  to  which  he  was 
wrathfully  consigned.  We  do  not  remember  having 
heard  the  banker  swear  either  before  or  after  this 
supreme  occasion. 

Some  arbitrary  rulers  have  a  tendency  to  assume  a 
certain  grandiloquence  in  their  oaths.  William  the 
Conqueror  swore  by  "  the  Splendor  of  God ;  "  Henry 
II.,  by  "  God's  Eyes  ; "  and  Charles  the  Bold,  by  "  the 
hundred  thousand  devils  of  hell,"  —  in  this  phrase  in 
dicating  how  accurate  a  census  he  had  taken  of  those 
inmates  of  pandemonium  who  most  had  possession  of 
himself.  Other  rulers,  gifted  with  a  strong  sense  of 
religious  duty,  have  denounced  terrible  punishments 
against  the  profane.  Saint  Louis  of  France  ordered 


THE  SWEARING  HABIT.  97 

that  the  tongue  of  the  utterer  of  oaths  should  be 
branded  with  a  red-hot  iron ;  and  his  gay  courtiers 
were  driven  to  ingenious  contrivances  of  verbal  ar 
rangement,  by  which  they  might  express  the  sub 
stance  of  swearing  without  using  the  words.  At  the 
period  of  the  English  Commonwealth  the  soldier  was 
compelled  to  abstain  from  profanity  by  fear  of  the 
penalties  attached  to  its  use.  In  1649  a  quarter 
master  was  tried  by  a  council  of  war  for  the  of 
fence,  declared  guilty,  and  sentenced,  not  only  to 
have  his  sword  broken  over  his  head,  and  to  be 
dismissed  from  the  service,  but  to  have  his  tongue 
bored  with  a  red-hot  iron.  In  the  old  drama  of  "  The 
Witch  of  Edmonton,"  the  author  cautions,  through 
the  mouth  of  the  devil  himself,  the  passionate  blas 
phemer  against  what  may  be  the  result  of  his  callings 
on  the  devil :  — 

"  Thou  never  art  so  distant 
From  an  evil  spirit,  but  that  thy  oaths, 
Curses,  and  blasphemies  pull  him  to  thine  elbow." 

Indeed,  in  hearing  some  men  swear,  the  hearer  is 
almost  converted  to  the  old  doctrine  of  demoniac  pos 
session.  What  most  impresses  us,  is  the  utter  sense 
lessness,  the  pure  insanity,  of  his  curses  and  maledic 
tions.  For  it  is  the  Almighty  that  this  "  aspiring  lump 
of  animated  dirt"  blasphemes.  The  folly  of  it  can 
only  be  fitly  described  in  that  energetic  and  vivid  pas 
sage  in  which  Dr.  South  draws  the  contrast  between 
the  power  of  the  offender  and  the  divine  object  of  his 
puny  wrath.  u  A  man  so  behaving  himself,"  he  says, 

7 


98  THE  SWEARING  HABIT. 

"  is  nothing  else  but  weakness  and  nakedness  setting 
itself  in  battle  array  against  Omnipotence  ;  a  handful 
of  dust  and  ashes  sending  a  challenge  to  all  the  host 
of  heaven.  For  what  else  are  words  and  talk  against 
thunderbolts,  and  the  weak,  empty  noise  of  a  queru 
lous  rage  against  him  who  can  speak  worlds,  —  who 
could  word  heaven  and  earth  out  of  nothing,  and  can 
when  he  pleases  word  them  into  nothing  again  ?  " 


DOMESTIC   SERVICE. 

WE  live  under  a  republican  form  of  government, 
where  the  rights  of  the  citizen  are  supposed  to  be 
jealously  guarded  by  law.  Leaving  out  some  limita 
tions  on  the  right  of  voting,  which  will  readily  occur 
to  every  reader,  the  statement  is  correct.  The  po 
litical  rights  of  the  individual  are  on  the  whole  well 
secured  and  maintained ;  but  these  are  not  sufficient 
to  confer  social  happiness.  Political  rights  enable  a 
man  to  have  a  voice  in  deciding  what  persons  shall 
rule  over  him,  and  make  and  execute  the  laws  of  the 
country.  But  his  political  well-being  may  be  rela 
tively  perfect  while  his  social  well-being  is  constantly 
vexed  and  tormented  by  certain  peculiarities  in  the 
organization,  or  rather  disorganization,  of  his  house 
hold.  He  votes  at  certain  times  and  at  certain  places 
once,  twice,  or  thrice  a  year,  and  the  annual  expendi 
ture  of  time  in  exercising  this  august  privilege  of  the 
freeman  is  hardly  an  hour;  but — taking  man  and 
wife  as  one  —  as  soon  as  he  proudly  leaves  the  polls 
and  enters  his  own  house,  he  is  no  longer  an  indepen 
dent  citizen  of  a  "  great  and  glorious  country,"  but  an 
abject  serf,  utterly  dependent  on  the  caprices  of  his 
domestics,  or,  as  they  are  ironically  named,  his  "  help." 
He  finds  his  wife  the  victim  of  an  intolerable  tyranny, 


100  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

which  presses  on  her  every  day  and  almost  every 
hour,  exerting  her  energies  in  often  vain  attempts  to 
put  down  an  insurrection  in  the  kitchen,  or  to  concil 
iate  the  insurgents.  He  may  have  been  during  the 
day  threatened  by  a  strike  of  the  laborers  in  his 
workshop,  and  have  used  all  the  resources  of  his 
patience,  intelligence,  and  character  in  so  adjusting 
matters  that  his  men,  being  reasonable  beings,  agree 
to  a  compromise  between  labor  and  capital  which 
does  justice  to  both.  When  he  arrives  at  his  house 
he  encounters  a  conflict  in  which  sullen  stupidity,  or 
vociferous  stupidity,  each  insensible  to  reason,  is  en 
gaged  in  battle  with  the  "  lady  of  the  house."  This 
last  conflict  is  too  much  for  him ;  he  commonly  suc 
cumbs  with  the  meekness  of  a  galley  slave,  and  witli 
a  rueful  countenance  tries  to  eat  his  half-done  pota 
toes  and  over-done  beefsteak  with  the  solemn  compo 
sure  of  a  martyr  at  the  stake. 

It  is  important  here  to  note  that  this  is  not  a  ques 
tion  of  equality.  The  nominal  master  and  mistress 
of  the  house  may  be  just  and  humane,  considerate  of 
the  rights  of  others,  and  sensitive  not  to  wound  their 
feelings ;  but  they  have  to  submit  to  the  mortifying 
fact  that  the  object  of  their  help  is  to  render  them 
helpless;  that  a  despotism  is  established  in  their 
house:  and  that  their  tyrants  are  their  hired  servants. 
There  is  more  or  less  resistance  going  on  for  a  time, 
but  the  autocracy  of  the  kitchen  is  firmly  established 
in  the  end.  Frequent  changes  of  help  do  little  good. 
One  spirit  seems  to  animate  the  whole  class.  The 


DOMESTIC  SEEYICE.  '"i'Ol 

new-comers  announce,  in  true  monarchial  fashion : 
"  The  Queen  is  dead.  Long  live  the  Queen ! "  Those 
who  are  dismissed  find  comfort,  as  they  depart,  in 
hearing  this  triumphant  strain  from  the  lips  of  their 
successors.  They  glow  with  the  thought  that  the 
household  from  which  they  are  expelled  will  still  be 
taught  to  know  that  domestic  life  is  indeed  a  "  fitful 
fever;"  that  the  art  of  "slaughtering  a  giant  with 
pins  "  is  not  yet  extinct  in  the  world ;  and  that  the 
process  of  converting  homes  into  hells  is  as  well 
understood  by  the  incoming  as  by  the  outgoing  deni 
zens  of  the  house. 

There  is  a  story  going  the  round  of  the  newspapers 
to  this  effect,  that  a  wife,  after  reading  the  report  of 
Queen  Victoria's  speech,  told  her  husband  she  was 
now  a  convert  to  woman  suffrage,  as  the  queen  had 
made  as  good  a  speech  as  a  king.  Her  husband 
objected  on  the  ground  that  Victoria,  like  the  rest 
of  her  sex,  when  she  says  anything  always  makes  a 
mess  of  it.  "  Look."  he  continued,  "  at  the  Irish  —  " 
"Yes,"  she  retorted,  "look  at  the  Irish.  If  she  had 
half  the  trouble  with  her  Bridgets  that  I  have,  who 
blames  her  —  "  "  But  that  is  a  matter  of  statesman 
ship,  and  not  of  domestic  affairs,"  was  his  response. 
Her  reply  was  crushing:  "My  dear,  it  requires  states 
manship  to  run  domestic  affairs.  You  just  try  it." 
Probably  this  excellent  stateswoman,  with  her  power 
of  managing  refractory  tempers  and  enforcing  neces 
sary  rules,  must  often  have  been  beaten  in  her  efforts 
to  maintain  her  persuasive  or  belligerent  supremacy, 


102'  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

—  must  have  sometimes  sighed  as  she  heard  what 
Hood  calls  that  "  wooden  damn  "  with  which  Bridget, 
after  a  reproof,  slams  the  door  as  she  descends  to  the 
realms  she  rules,  and  heard,  with  a  sinking  of  the 
heart,  the  crash  of  crockery  (sworn  to  be  accidental) 
which  occurred  soon  afterward.  In  fact,  no  states 
man  or  stateswoman  has  yet  solved  the  problem  — 
and  it  may  be  that  it  is  a  problem  impossible  to  be 
solved  by  human  skill  and  intelligence  —  how  to  har 
monize  the  relations  between  those  who  hire  and 
those  who  are  hired,  so  that  persons  of  limited  in 
comes  can  have  a  comfortable  home.  Take  the  ma 
jority  of  modest  householders,  who  set  up  house 
keeping  on  fifteen  hundred  or  twenty-five  hundred  a 
year,  and  ask  them,  after  twenty  years'  experience 
of  the  petty  miseries  attendant  on  their  employment 
of  one  or  two  domestics,  the  terrible  pessimistic  ques 
tion,  "Is  life  worth  living?"  and  it  is  to  be  feared 
that  their  answer  would  be  a  sorrowful  or  splenetic 
or  passionate  "  No  ! " 

More  than  half  a  century  ago,  Colonel  Hamilton, 
one  of  the  officers  who  won  their  laurels  in  Welling 
ton's  campaigns  in  Spain  and  Portugal,  published  a 
book  which  he  called  "  Men  and  Manners  in  America.'1 
He  criticised  both  our  men  and  manners  with  a  caus 
tic  severity  such  as  might  have  been  predicted  when  a 
bigoted  Scotch  tory  assailed  the  people  and  institu 
tions  of  a  republic.  His  work  exasperated  almost 
every  American  who  read  it,  and  Edward  Everett 
never  wrote  a  more  popular  paper  than  his  scorching 


DOMESTIC  SERVICE.  103 

criticism  of  it  in  the  "North  American  Review."  The 
book  is  now  forgotten.  Still  one  sentence  in  it  sur 
vives  in  the  memories  of  antiquarians,  and  it  is  this  : 
"  In  an  American  dinner  party,  the  first  dish  served 
up  is  the  roasted  mistress  of  the  house."  It  is  to  be 
supposed  that  the  author  only  condescended  to  dine 
with  persons  distinguished  by  their  opulence  or  official 
position ;  and  it  seems  to  prove  that  domestic  service, 
fifty  or  sixty  years  ago,  in  the  mansions  of  the  rich 
was  as  much  in  a  state  of  anarchy,  owing  to  the  in 
competence  or  ill  temper  of  the  cook  and  her  assist 
ants,  as  it  is  now  in  humbler  dwellings.  Indeed, 
who  has  not  occasionally  seen,  at  ordinary  dinner 
parties  where  no  aristocratic  Colonel  Hamilton  is 
present,  the  flaming  countenance  of  the  mistress  of 
the  house,  as  she  takes  her  seat  at  the  head  of  the 
table,  indicating  how  hard  has  been  her  contest  with 
her  "  help  "  ? 

But  at  the  time  a  Mrs.  Schuyler,  or  a  Mrs.  Adams, 
or  a  Mrs.  Quincy  may  have  appeared  to  the  British 
guest  as  a  victim  to  the  incompetency  of  her  cook,  a 
representative  of  the  great  house  of  Devonshire  was 
subject  to  a  tyranny  of  another  kind.  The  duke  hap 
pened  to  be  prejudiced  against  port  wine,  which  those 
who  were  admitted  to  his  great  dinner  parties  pre 
ferred  to  other  wines.  The  duke's  butler,  knowing 
his  master's  taste,  provided  the  best  champagne  and 
claret  that  could  be  purchased  in  Europe,  but  bought 
the  worst  port  he  could  find  at  a  low  price,  and 
charged  the  duke  at  the  price  which  was  notoriously 


104  DOMESTIC   SERVICE. 

demanded  by  wine  dealers  for  the  best.  The  im 
position  was  successful  for  years.  Nobody  who  was 
invited  to  the  dinners  of  a  duke  could  dare  to  remon 
strate  against  the  liquid  logwood  they  swallowed  as 
port.  At  last  one  friend  had  the  courage  to  tell  the 
duke  that  his  butler  was  a  rascal.  The  result  was 
an  investigation  of  the  facts ;  the  offending  servant 
was  ignominiously  dismissed,  but  not  until  he  had 
amassed  a  comfortable  amount  of  some  two  or  three 
thousand  pounds  as  a  compensation  for  his  disgrace. 

This  is  a  pertinent  illustration  of  the  difference 
between  our  domestics  and  those  of  England.  People 
are  never  tired  of  berating  ours  as  barbarians,  and 
contrasting  them  with  those  of  England,  who  are 
thoroughly  tamed  and  trained,  and  do  their  work  with 
exemplary  skill  and  propriety.  In  the  great  houses 
of  England  most  of  the  servants  are  sycophantic  and 
crafty,  bending  their  knees  in  prostrate  adoration  be 
fore  the  "  gentry  "  they  serve,  but  at  the  same  time 
taking  every  secure  opportunity  to  pick  their  pockets. 
An  English  servant  of  an  English  noble  is  apt  to  be 
the  most  ignoble  of  men. 

But  the  female  English  domestic  is  the  ideal  of 
many  American  women  who  can  afford  to  hire  one. 
The  history  and  literature  of  England  show  the  in 
correctness  of  this  assumption.  Take  the  literature 
of  England  from  the  time  of  Charles  the  Second,  and 
you  will  find  that  a  majority  of  the  clear-cited  drama 
tists  and  novelists  represent  the  servant  maids  as 
the  obedient  accomplices  of  their  mistresses  in  every 


DOMESTIC  SERVICE.  105 

questionable  act  they  do  but  plundering  those  whom 
they  serve.  Even  to  the  present  day  one  can  hardly 
enter  a  theatre  without  finding  the  pert  and  unscrupu 
lous  chambermaid  of  the  comedy  to  be  a  lively  com 
bination  of  liar  and  trickster,  an  expert  in  effrontery, 
malice,  and  mischief,  and  destitute  equally  of  the 
sense  of  honor  and  the  sense  of  shame. 

In  the  last  century,  Fielding  condensed  the  whole 
class  in  his  Mrs.  Slipsop.  u  My  betters  !  "  she  indig 
nantly  exclaims,  "  who  is  my  betters,  pray  ?  "  As  to 
the  large  question  of  domestic  service,  Dickens  and 
Thackeray,  in  our  own  generation,  have  shown  what 
people  have  to  endure  in  the  continual  hostility  be 
tween  the  kitchen  and  the  drawing-room.  David 
Copperfield,  when  he  has  won  the  adorable  Dora,  his 
"child  wife,"  is  daily  tormented  by  the  doings  and 
misdoings  of  the  wretches  she  employs  as  servants, 
and  whom  the  adorable  Dora  is  utterly  incapable  of 
converting  into  "  help ;  "  and  in  the  household  of  Mr. 
Dombey,  what  a  picture  is  presented  of  the  kitchen 
aristocracy  of  the  mansion  in  which  the  great  mer 
chant  dwells,  and  in  which  he  has  the  pretension 
to  believe  that  he  is  the  lord  and  master !  How  is 
he  looked  down  upon,  when  he  fails,  by  the  mean 
est  menial  whose  business  it  is  to  scrub  the  floors  of 
his  house  !  Indeed,  the  description  of  the  assembly 
of  Mr.  Dombey's  domestics,  when  it  is  known  that 
the  firm  of  Dombey  &  Son  has  fallen  into  cureless 
ruin,  is  one  of  Dickens's  masterpieces.  Thackeray, 
in  all  his  novels,  seems  to  be  haunted  with  the  idea 


106  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

of  the  utter  falsity  of  English  domestics,  from  the 
august  butler  of  the  palatial  mansion  down  to  the 
wench  who  does  the  lowest  work  of  the  cheap  board 
ing-house.  He  is  never  more  cynical  than  when  he 
records  the  scandalous  and  unfavorable  judgments 
delivered  by  the  tenants  of  the  kitchen  on  their  mas 
ters  and  mistresses.  One  would  hesitate,  indeed,  to 
undertake  the  forming  of  a  household  in  England,  if 
he  were  dolorously  impressed  by  Thackeray's  moni 
tions  as  to  the  essential  antagonism  between  those 
who  dwelt  below  the  drawing-room  and  those  who 
dwelt  in  the  room  itself.  The  two,  being  separated 
by  distinction  of  caste,  can  rarely  have  with  each 
other  cordial  human  relations.  There  may  be  for 
mal  subordination  and  obedience  on  the  part  of  the 
servants ;  but  hate,  envy,  uncharitableness,  rankle 
beneath  the  mask  of  sycophancy  they  wear. 

Much  has  been  written  about  realistic  fiction  as 
distinguished  from  fiction  which  is  eminently  unreal 
istic  ;  and  English  novelists  who  belong  to  the  latter 
class  are  still  prone  to  push  upon  the  attention  of 
their  readers  a  revival  of  the  old  feudal  relation 
between  mistress  and  maid.  It  seems  from  these 
novels  that  they  are  bound  together  by  the  ties  of 
mutual  affection.  The  mistress  condescends  to  make 
her  maid  her  confidante,  confides  to  her  all  her 
griefs  and  joys,  and  is  rewarded  for  her  protecting 
kindness  by  awakening  in  the  bosom  of  her  maid 
a  sentiment  of  love  which  is  entirely  independent  of 
self-interest.  The  husband  of  the  lady  is  ruined  by 


DOMESTIC   SERVICE.  107 

a  trusted  friend,  who  proves  to  be  a  villain,  or  he  is 
made  a  bankrupt  by  some  unfortunate  speculation, 
or  he  is  suspected  of  a  crime  which  compels  him  to 
fly  from  his  home  and  country,  —  at  any  rate,  he  dies 
forever  or  disappears  for  a  time.  The  disconsolate 
wife  or  widow  calls  the  roll  of  her  "  pampered  min 
ions,"  pays  them  their  wages  up  to  the  day  of  their 
separation,  and  they  depart  from  the  house  with  an 
ill-concealed  scorn  of  their  ruined  employer.  But  one 
aged  domestic  remains  ;  she  protests  that  she  will 
never  leave  her  mistress ;  she  will  serve  her  with 
out  wages,  —  nay,  all  the  money  she  has  saved  up  for 
a  series  of  years  shall  be  forthcoming  at  this  mo 
ment  of  financial  distress  in  the  household  ;  and  ends 
by  flinging  herself  into  the  arms  of  her  dejected  mis 
tress,  and  in  a  flood  of  tears  declares  that  she  will 
never  desert  her  beloved  mistress  —  never  !  never  ! ! 
never ! ! !  Three  points  of  admiration  hardly  do  jus 
tice  to  the  pathos  of  the  scene.  Scores  of  novels 
might  be  named  in  which  it  is  rehearsed  to  the  im 
mense  satisfaction  of  sentimental  readers,  who  would 
never  do  anything  of  the  kind  themselves.  Practical 
people  are  now  apt  to  consider  this  disinterested,  this 
sublime  self-devotion  of  the  feminine  servant  to  the 
feminine  employer  as  something  bordering  on  the  un 
real,  so  far  as  their  experience  goes.  Perhaps  some 
of  them  are  malicious  enough  to  remember  Mrs. 
Micawber's  repeated  statement  to  David  Copperfield, 
when  the  hot  punch  was  passed  around  the  table, 
that,  despite  the  injurious  opinions  which  her  dis- 


108  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

tinguished  relations  had  formed  of  her  husband's  ca 
pacity  to  get  an  honest  living  for  himself  and  family, 
she  would  never  desert  Mr.  Micawber  —  never,  never, 
never ! 

Indeed,  persons  of  limited  incomes,  whether  poets, 
scientists,  mechanics,  clerks,  or  philanthropists,  are 
commonly  subjected,  and  always  have  been  subjected 
to  the  tyranny  of  domestics,  without  regard  to  their 
place  of  residence  in  one  country  or  another.  Neither 
genius,  nor  integrity,  nor  virtue,  nor  fame,  nor  saint- 
liness  of  character,  can  check  a  virago's  tongue  when 
she  condescends  to  enter  a  comparatively  poor  man's 
home,  after  she  has  served  an  apprenticeship,  even  as 
scullion,  in  the  mansion  of  a  millionnaire.  Perhaps 
nothing  could  better  illustrate  this  fact  than  to  cite 
an  instance  from  the  biography  of  one  of  the  most 
prominent  poets  of  the  century.  Thomas  Campbell, 
after  publishing  "  The  Pleasures  of  Hope,"  and  many 
immortal  lyrics,  such  as  "  Hohenlinden,"  "  Ye  Mari 
ners  of  England,"  and  "  The  Battle  of  the  Baltic," 
which  had  thrilled  the  whole  nation,  settled  down  in 
Sydenham  with  his  wife  and  child,  —  poor,  but  with 
a  great  and  wide  poetical  fame.  In  a  letter  to  an 
other  immortal,  Walter  Scott,  he  humorously  nar 
rates  a  comic  epic  which  had  occurred  in  his  own 
home.  It  seems  that  he  hired  a  cook,  recommended 
to  him  as  faithful  and  sober,  who  had  been,  with 
her  husband,  for  many  years  on  board  of  .a  man- 
of-war.  In  the  course  of  seven  weeks,  however,  she 
developed  her  real  character,  and  went  from  bad  to 


DOMESTIC  SERVICE.  109 

worse.  "  One  fatal  day,"  Campbell  says,  "  she  fell 
upon  us  in  a  state  of  intoxication,  venting  cries  of 
rage  like  an  insane  bacchanalian,  and  tagged  to  our 
names  all  the  opprobrious  epithets  the  English  lan 
guage  supplies.  An  energetic  mind,  in  this  state  of 
inflammation,  and  a  face  naturally  Gorgonian,  kindled 
to  the  white  heat  of  fury,  and  venting  the  dialect  of 
the  damned,  were  objects  sufficiently  formidable  to 
silence  our  whole  household.  The  oratrix  continued 
imprecations  till  I  locked  up  my  wife,  child,  and 
nurse  to  be  out  of  her  reach,  and  descending  to  the 
kitchen,  paid  her  wages,  and  thrust  her  forthwith  out 
of  my  doors,  she  howling  with  absolute  rage.  Dur 
ing  the  dispute,  she  cursed  us  for  hell-fire  children  of 
brimstone,  whose  religion  was  the  religion  of  cats 
and  dogs.  I  asked  the  virago  what  was  her  religion, 
since  her  practice  was  so  devout.  '  Mine,'  says  she, 
'  is  the  religion  of  the  Royal  Navy,'  at  the  same  time 
showing  a  prayer-book.  After  vainly  trying  to  set 
the  house  on  fire,  this  curious  devotee  set  off  for 
London  on  the  top  of  a  stage-coach,  cursing  as  she 
went." 

It  seems  to  us  that  this  is  a  typical  scene.  It  has 
been  witnessed  since  by  so  many  small  householders, 
that  it  is  needless  to  remind  them  that  a  certain  ele 
ment  of  ceremonial  religion  mixes  with  the  ribaldry 
and  blasphemy  of  such  domestics.  "  Mine,"  the 
drunken  brute  exclaims,  "  is  the  religion  of  the  Royal 
Navy."  All  persons  who  have  borne  an  active  part 
in  turning  such  creatures  out  of  their  houses  must 


110  DOMESTIC   SERVICE. 

have  noticed  that  a  vague  sense  of  formal  piety  finds 
utterance  in  their  wild  maledictions ;  still  it  is  a  piety 
which  comforts  itself  in  predicting  sure  future  dam 
nation  to  the  masters  or  mistresses  who  call  it  forth. 
But  perhaps  the  worst  of  the  matter  is,  that  such 
domestic  hornets  develop  the  habit  of  swearing  in 
employers  who  previously  had  shown  no  tendency  to 
the  vice.  Indeed,  to  many  heads  of  families  a  course 
of  housekeeping  is  a  school  of  profanity. 

The  domestic  service  of  the  United  States  is  mostly 
composed  of  immigrants  who  differ  from  their  em 
ployers  in  race,  manners,  and  religion.  In  one  of  the 
most  splendid  orations  of  Edward  Everett,  he  happily 
contrasted  the  peaceful  emigrants  who  came  from 
Ireland,  Germany,  and  other  European  countries  to 
settle  here,  with  the  descent  of  the  barbarians  on  the 
Roman  Empire.  The  former  came  to  increase  enor 
mously  the  wealth  and  productive  power  of  the  nation 
they  peacefully  invaded  ;  the  warlike  mission  of  the 
latter  was  to  destroy  and  devastate  what  the  genius 
and  industry  of  former  centuries  had  accumulated. 
The  former  came  to  create  new  capital ;  the  latter 
to  annihilate  the  capital  which  had  previously  been 
added  to  the  stores  of  civilization.  Indeed,  the  im 
mense  debt  which  we  owe  to  what  is  called  foreign 
labor  —  though  laborers  from  abroad  are  so  swiftly 
assimilated  into  the  mass  of  our  citizens,  that  the 
word  foreign  hardly  applies  to  them  —  is  practically 
incalculable.  It  has  been  for  some  time  considered 
that  the  yearly  additions  to  our  population  from  this 


DOMESTIC  SERVICE.  Ill 

source  is,  in  a  great  degree,  an  index  of  our  advancing 
prosperity. 

There  are  evils  resulting  from  this  rush  of  new 
powers  and  influences  into  the  rapid  stream  of  our 
American  life,  but  the  evils  are  overcome  in  time  by 
counterbalancing  good.  It  certainly  is  provoking  to 
have  a  few  foreign  socialists,  escaping  perhaps  from 
the  prisons  of  their  native  countries,  or  from  the  fear 
of  being  imprisoned  in  them,  coming  to  this  land  of 
liberty  and  labor,  and  in  corner  groceries  and  lager- 
beer  saloons  announcing  the  doctrine  that  laborers 
cannot  get  their  rights,  unless  they  begin  their  cru 
sade  against  capital  by  robbery,  arson,  and  murder ; 
but  it  is  hard  to  convince  a  workman  who  really 
works,  that  he  is  to  become  better  off  by  destroying 
the  palpable  and  permanent  monuments  of  previous 
generations  of  laborers,  such  as  houses,  mills,  rail 
roads  and,  other  evidences  of  labor  capitalized.  In 
deed,  the  belligerent  socialist  is  merely  a  reproduction 
of  Attila  and  Alboin,  acting  a  part  which  is  foreign 
to  our  present  civilization. 

This  is  one  side  of  foreign  immigration,  —  its  be 
neficent  side.  The  other  side  relates  to  the  mothers, 
daughters,  and  sisters  of  the  inflowing  host,  who  "  go 
out  to  service,"  and  who  control  most  of  the  business. 
The  gradual  disappearance  of  American  girls  from 
service  in  families  is  a  calamity  both  to  themselves 
and  the  public,  and  it  is  based  on  an  absurd  prejudice 
that  they  lower  their  position  and  forfeit  their  inde 
pendence  in  doing  what  they  call  menial  work.  They 


112  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

accordingly  rather  prefer  to  labor  in  factories,  or 
swell  the  crowd  of  half-starved  sewing-women,  than 
to  gain  board,  lodging,  and  good  wages  in  a  private 
family.  The  result  is  that  the  Irish,  German,  and 
Swedish  women,  who  have  had  no  education  qualify 
ing  them  for  the  business  of  cooks  and  general  house 
hold  work,  learn  their  duties  by  experimenting  on  the 
meats  given  them  to  prepare  for  the  table,  and  on  the 
floors  and  carpets  they  are  to  scrub  or  sweep.  This 
Kindergarten  system  results  in  educating  them  at  last 
into  domestics,  but  it  is  at  the  expense  of  a  great 
breaking  of  crockery,  a  series  of  burnt  steaks  and 
chops  which  are  uneatable,  and  a  trial  of  the  em 
ployer's  patience,  which  gradually  results  in  nervous 
prostration.  The  servants  undoubtedly  follow  the 
Baconian  theory  that  knowledge  is  obtained  by  obser 
vation  and  experiment ;  but  their  experiments  resem 
ble  those  of  the  Irish  pilot,  who,  after  remarking  to 
the  captain  of  the  ship  that  the  coast  was  full  of 
sunken  rocks,  casually  added  as  the  vessel  struck, 
"  and  that  is  one  of  'em  ! " 

It  would  be  a  lesson  in  the  study  of  human  nature 
to  note  all  the  varieties  of  experience  which  the  mis 
tress  of  a  house  passes  through  when  one  servant, 
who  has  been  educated  in  this  way,  departs,  and 
another,  who  has  also  obtained  an  approximate  idea 
of  what  good  housekeeping  means,  applies  for  the 
vacant  place.  There  is  no  form  of  "  interviewing " 
more  prolific  than  this  of  incidents  illustrating  the 
conflicts  and  collisions  of  adverse  specimens  of 


DOMESTIC  SERVICE.  113 

human  character.  There,  for  instance,  is  the  inter 
esting  invalid,  who  is  bullied  and  browbeaten  by  the 
energetic  virago  who  storms  into  the  house,  demands 
the  wages  which  she  thinks  her  services  are  worth, 
obtains  them,  and  then  dominates  the  household, 
reigning  supreme  until  the  master  of  the  establish 
ment  is  compelled  to  interfere,  and  dismisses  her 
with  words  that  savor  more  of  strength  than  of  right 
eousness.  The  list  might  go  on  to  include  the  fretful, 
the  economical,  the  bad-tempered,  the  shrewd,  the 
equitable,  the  humane  female  heads  of  households 
that  require  help,  but  find  it  difficult  to  procure  from 
those  who  offer  it.  Perhaps  it  would  be  well  to  con 
dense  and  generalize  the  whole  matter  in  dispute  by 
citing  an  example  in  which  the  applicant  for  a  situa 
tion  was  confronted  by  a  woman  who  had  a  touch 
of  humor  in  her  composition.  In  all  the  dignity  of 
second-hand  finery,  resplendent  with  Attleboro'  dia 
monds  and  rubies  which  must  have  cost  at  the  least 
a  quarter  of  a  dollar  a  gem,  the  towering  lady  sweeps 
into  the  parlor,  and  demands  a  sight  of  the  lady  of 
the  house.  The  meek  lady  of  the  house  appears.  "  I 
understand  you  want  a  second  girl  to  do  the  house 
work."  "  Yes,"  is  the  gentle  response.  The  high 
contracting  parties  forthwith  proceed  to  discuss  the 
terms  of  the  treaty  by  which  the  claimant  for  the 
office  of  second-girlship  will  condescend  to  accept  the 
place,  stating  her  terms,  her  perquisites,  and  her  right 
to  have  two  or  three  evenings  of  every  week  at  her 
own  disposal,  when  her  engagements  will  compel  her 


114  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

to  be  absent  from  the  house.  The  reply  is, "  It  seems 
to  me,  if  we  comply  with  your  terms,  it  would  be 
better  for  my  husband  and  myself  to  go  out  to  service 
ourselves,  for  we  never  have  had  such  privileges  as 
you  claim."  "  That  is  nothing  to  me.  I  have  lived 
in  the  most  genteel  families  of  the  city,  and  have 
always  insisted  on  my  rights  in  this  matter.  By  the 
way,  have  you  any  children?"  "Yes,  I  have  two." 
"  Well,  I  object  to  children."  "  If  your  objections, 
madam,  are  insuperable,  the  children  can  easily  be 
killed."  "  Oh !  you  are  joking,  I  see.  But  I  think  I 
will  try  you  for  a  week  to  see  how  I  can  get  along 
with  you."  The  curt  response  is  :  u  You  shall  not  try 
me,  but  the  one  minute  which  elapses  between  your 
speedy  descent  from  those  stairs,  and  your  equally 
speedy  exit  from  the  door."  The  high  contracting 
parties  being  unable,  under  the  circumstances,  to  for 
mulate  a  treaty  agreeable  to  both,  the  applicant  for 
the  vacant  place  disappears  in  a  fury  of  rage. 

It  may  be  said  that  this  is  a  caricature  of  what 
actually  occurs  in  such  interviews  and  encounters ; 
but  it  has  an  essential  truth  underneath  its  seeming 
exaggeration.  In  almost  all  the  professions  and  occu 
pations  in  which  men  are  engaged,  the  supply  is  com 
monly  more  than  equal  to  the  demand.  In  domestic 
service  the  supply  of  intelligently  trained  servants  is 
notoriously  far  short  of  the  demand.  One  must  notice 
the  readiness  with  which  clubs,  of  late,  are  formed, 
for  advancing  all  imaginable  causes  which  can  arrest 
the  attention  of  intelligent,  patriotic,  philanthropic 


DOMESTIC  SERVICE.  115 

men.  They  meet  weekly,  fortnightly,  or  monthly,  at 
some  hotels  noted  for  their  excellent  method  of  cook 
ing  the  fish  and  flesh  which  are  daily  on  the  dinner- 
tables  of  the  members,  but  cooked  on  a  different 
method.  The  Sunday  newspapers  report  the  effusions 
of  eloquence  which  the  Saturday  meetings  call  forth. 
The  clubs  multiply  also  with  a  rapidity  which  puzzles 
ordinary  observers  to  account  for  their  popularity. 
Perhaps  a  simple  reason  may  be  timidly  ventured  as 
an  explanation  of  this  phenomenon.  Men  who  are 
classed  as  prosperous  citizens  like  a  good  dinner, 
which  they  cannot  get  at  home,  and  at  stated  periods 
they  throng  to  a  hotel,  where  the  Lord  sends  the 
meats,  and  at  the  same  time  prevents  the  devil  from 
sending  the  cooks. 

It  will  be  said  that  this  attack  on  the  present  disor 
ganization  of  our  domestic  service  is  one-sided.  It  is. 
Doubtless  much  may  be  urged  in  reply,  arraigning  the 
conduct  of  employers,  and  defending  that  of  the  em 
ployees.  Many  evils  of  the  present  relations  between 
the  two  might  be  averted  by  a  mutual  understanding 
of  each  other's  motives  and  aims.  Still  the  previous 
education  of  domestics,  not  only  in  the  enlightenment 
of  their  minds,  but  in  the  regulation  of  their  tempers, 
is  the  pressing  need  at  present.  If  some  charitable 
person  should  start  a  College  for  the  Education  of 
Female  Domestics,  its  success  in  increasing  human 
happiness  would  prompt  others  to  follow  in  his  lead. 
Such  a  college  might  turn  out  thousands  on  thousands 
of  competent  servants  every  three  or  four  months. 


116  DOMESTIC  SERVICE. 

The  diplomas  it  would  give  would  command  attention 
at  once ;  and  the  way  now  followed,  of  sending  to 
the  girl's  "  references  "  and  receiving  evasive  replies, 
would  be  discountenanced.  It  would  also  give  all 
classes  of  domestics  a  great  lift  in  social  estimation ; 
the  certificates,  that  they  have  graduated  with  honor 
in  such  colleges,  would  be  equivalent  to  the  B.A.  or 
A.M.  of  colleges  of  another  sort,  when  a  young  stu 
dent  applies  for  the  position  of  schoolmaster  in  a 
country  town  or  village.  At  any  rate,  a  vast  mass  of 
unnecessary  misery  in  families  might  be  prevented, 
and  a  large  addition  made  to  the  stock  of  human 
happiness. 


RELIGION  AND   SCIENTIFIC   THEORIES. 

IN  the  various  works  written  by  devout,  learned, 
and  "  liberal "  theologians  on  the  harmony  between 
religion  and  science,  there  appears  to  be  a  general 
oversight  of  the  "esoteric"  doctrine — the  inner  and 
fundamental  principle  —  of  much  current  scientific 
theorizing.  Theologians  are  apt  to  consider  the  ques 
tion  as  if  it  were  simply  a  question  of  the  credibility 
of  the  Bible.  It  goes  much  deeper  than  that.  It 
relates  to  religion  itself,  —  not  merely  to  the  Christian 
religi'on,  but  to  all  religions.  Historically  it  is  ad 
mitted,  on  rationalistic  grounds,  that  what  is  called 
"the  spiritual  nature  of  man"  demands  a  religion  of 
some  kind.  The  philosophic  scientists  question  the 
propriety  of  this  appeal  to  man's  spiritual  nature. 
The  theological  rationalists  are,  in  fact,  quite  ortho 
dox  in  comparison  with  many  of  the  theorists  of 
"  advanced "  and  advancing  science.  And  even 
among  the  latter  there  are  degrees  of  audacity. 
Some  of  them  question  the  possibility  of  a  personal 
God,  but  are  willing  to  compromise  with  man's 
"  spiritual  nature "  by  admitting  the  validity  of  a 
vague  Pantheism.  Others,  shocked  at  the  sentimen 
tality  of  their  speculative  brethren,  remind  them  that 
Pantheism  is  as  much  opposed  to  positive  science  as 


118        RELIGION   AND   SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES. 

Deism.      The  human  understanding,  according  to  the 
latter  class,  is  simply  the  result  of  a  development  of 
the  forces  of  Nature,  which  dates  back  to  the  nebu 
lous   mist   out   of    which    worlds    were   formed,   and 
which   arrived    at   last,    through    the   travail    of   un 
counted  millions  of  years,  to  the  brain  of  the  monkey, 
and   has   thence   been    developed   into   the   brain   of 
Aristotle  and  Descartes,    of  Dante  and  Shakspeare, 
of  Kepler  and  Newton.      Conceding  that  God,  or  gods, 
may  be  ahead  in  this  process  of  development,  it  is  an 
outrage,  they  insist,  on   common  sense  to  assert  that 
either  God  or  gods  are  back  of  it.     "  We  know,"  they 
say,  "  nothing  of   the   matter  ;   our  faculties  are  too 
limited   to   see   any   sense    in   what   theological    and 
metaphysical  dogmatists  have  confidently  announced. 
But,  modest  thinkers   as  we  are,  we  recommend  that 
men  confine  themselves  within  the  sphere  of  positive 
knowledge.     In  positive  knowledge  no  God  is  appar 
ent.     On  our  theories  of  positive  knowledge,  no  God 
can  ever  be  apparent ;    for   finite   intelligence   must 
ever  be  confined  within  the  limits  of  finite  facts  and 
laws.     We  can  get  along  very  well  without  your  hy 
pothesis  of  a  creative  God,  —  a  hypothesis  which  has 
now,  in  the  language  of  a  selfishly  sagacious  French 
bookseller,  lost  all  interest  with  the  public.     You  say, 
quoting  one  of  your  antiquated  religious  books,  that 
the  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God ;  we  say,  after 
M.    Comte,    that   they   rather    declare    the   glory    of 
Kepler,  Newton,  and  La  Place.     You  say,  from  the 
same  authority,  that  man  was  created  a  little  lower 


RELIGION  AND   SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES.       119 

than  the  angels  ;  we  are  satisfied  in  knowing  that  he 
has  been  developed  into  a  condition  which  is  now, 
thanks  to  "  natural  selection,"  a  good  deal  higher 
than  that  of  the  monkeys.  The  fundamental  point 
of  difference  between  you  and  us  is  this :  "  That  we 
do  not  admit  your  right  to  speak  of  a  living  God, 
either  personal  or  impersonal.  In  making  the  asser 
tion,  you  simply  show  your  ignorance  of  the  progress 
of  scientific  philosophy,  based,  as  it  is,  on  ascertained 
facts  and  demonstrated  laws.  At  the  best,  your  as 
sumption  must  be  considered  premature.  All  we 
know  is  that  we  have  got  far  beyond  our  immediate 
ancestor,  the  monkey.  Monkey  has  become  man. 
Rest  in  that  consoling  fact." 

Theologians  and  metaphysicians,  who  may  be  dis 
posed  to  be  perfectly  fair  to  their  opponents,  answer 
these  theorists  in  this  way:  "Admitting  your  ex 
planation  of  what  we  call  the  creation  of  nature  and 
man,  there  is  still  no  need  to  deny  a  Creator.  Your 
theory,  supported  as  it  is  by  many  facts  scientifically 
established,  but  with  many  other  facts  entirely  un 
explained,  may  be  God's  method  of  creation.  We 
are  willing  to  admit  that  He  created,  according  to 
your  conceited  method  ;  but  why  deny  him  ?  "  The 
scientific  theorists  answer  :  "  We  can  do  without 
him."  "  But  where  did  you  get  your  nebulous  mat 
ter?"  "That,"  is  the  sulky  reply,  "is  something 
outside  of  positive  science."  "  But  you,  after  all,  rest 
the  world,  as  in  the  old  times,  when  philosophy  was 
notoriously  ww-positive,  on  an  elephant ;  and  you  can't 


120       RELIGION  AND  SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES. 

find  anything  for  the  elephant  to  stand  on."  "  We 
don't  trouble  ourselves  to  find  anything  for  it  to 
stand  on.  That's  a  work  beyond  the  capacity  of  the 
human  faculties."  "  But,  if  it  be  beyond  the  capacity 
of  the  human  faculties,  it  is  still  shown  by  experience 
that  it  is  not  beyond  the  capacity  of  human  nature." 
"What  you  call  human  nature,  as  distinguished  from 
human  intelligence,  is  a  confused  mass  of  stuff,  made 
up  of  sentiment  and  imagination,  and  of  no  logical 
bearing  on  the  question."  In  short,  men  of  this  kind 
indicate,  mentally,  a  disease  similar  to  that  which 
oculists  style  color-blindness.  People  afflicted  with 
color-blindness  are  often  gifted  with  more  than  or 
dinary  understanding ;  but  it  is  impossible  to  argue 
with  them  on  the  difference  between  red  and  blue, 
"  They  do  not  see  it."  They  are  men  of  a  vigorous 
intelligence,  who,  in  a  similar  way,  can  get  no  idea 
of  Cause.  They  are  deficient  in  the  power  of  per 
ceiving  it,  and  think  that  those  who  do  perceive  it 
are  under  a  hallucination.  The  mental,  like  the 
bodily  eye,  is  apt  to  be  blind  in  some  respects  when 
it  is  uncommonly  sharp-sighted  in  others. 

It  is  obvious  that  the  advanced  guard  of  scientific 
theorists  have,  at  least,  as  much  im-scientific  pre 
sumption,  bigotry,  and  intolerance  as  some  of  their 
most  unreasonable  theological  opponents.  Hypothe 
sis  is  an  admirable  aid  and  guide  to  investigation  ; 
but  it  is  as  intolerable  when  it  dogmatizes  scientifi 
cally  as  when  it  dogmatizes  theologically.  Positive 
philosophy  has  no  right  to  go  beyond  generalized 


RELIGION  AND   SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES.       121 

knowledge,  from  theories  of  the  universe,  and  then 
enforce  them  on  the  intelligence  of  mankind  as  in 
disputable  facts,  which  it  is  idiotic  or  superstitious 
to  deny  or  to  denounce.  It  violates  its  own  principles 
in  attempting  to  explain  what  it  declares  to  be  es 
sentially  unexplainable.  The  heart  of  the  mystery 
has  notoriously  not  been  yet  reached  by  science.  If 
we  give  up  the  old  idea  that  man  was  created  in 
the  image  of  God,  let  us  have  manliness  enough  to 
refuse  assent  to  the  proposition  that  he  was  created 
after  the  image  of  Huxley,  or  Darwin,  or  Spencer. 
However  much  we  may  honor  the  force  and  com 
prehensiveness  of  such  individual  minds,  they  still 
are  not  gods.  Holmes  in  a  recent  paper  humorously 
wonders  whether  the  race  will  hereafter  substitute 
Anno  Danvini  for  Anno  Domini;  and  thinks  that, 
even  in  case  of  such  a  change,  the  convenient  A.  D. 
will  be  retained.  This  stroke  of  wit  lights  up  as  by 
a  flash  of  lightning  the  absurdity  of  supposing  that 
any  scientific  theory  of  the  present  day  can  control 
the  science  of  a  thousand  years  hence. 

But,  leaving  out  of  view  the  scientific  theories 
which  are  put  forward  to  satisfy  man's  insatiable 
intellectual  curiosity,  the  essential  question  comes  up: 
"  Will  man,  centuries  hence,  be  content  to  substitute 
generalized  knowledge  for  religion  ? " 

It  seems  to  us  that  the  inmost  essence  of  man, 
his  soul,  will  more  than  keep  pace  with  the  progress 
of  his  mind  in  knowledge.  God  will  be  as  near  to  his 
heart  as  now,  and  as  distant  from  his  understanding 


122       RELIGION  AND    SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES. 

as  now.  The  Divine  nature  will  never  lose  its  intimate 
hold  on  human  nature,  and  never  be  comprehended 
by  the  human  intellect.  God  will  be  everlastingly  in 
the  soul  of  man,  and  everlastingly  outside  of  the  grasp 
of  his  thought.  As  the  scientific  development  pro 
ceeds,  it  will  be  more  and  more  felt  that  God  leads  it 
on.  His  "  grace  "  will  be  recognized  by  future  New- 
tons,  as  well  as  by  future  Wesleys.  We  were  never 
more  struck  by  an  intense  shock  of  surprise  than 
when  we  heard  a  distinguished  naturalist  say,  at  a 
dinner-table,  that  at  the  critical  moment  of  his  investi 
gations,  at  the  time  his  mind  was  on  the  brink  of  a 
discovery — at  the  time  he  was,  as  he  thought,  pene 
trating  into  a  jealously  guarded  secret  of  Nature  —  he 
involuntarily  uttered  a  prayer  to  God  to  guide  and 
direct  him.  He  felt,  he  said,  the  Divine  Presence  as 
soon  as  he  really  entered  His  heretofore  concealed 
domain.  He  was  impressed  with  his  own  individual 
nothingness  in  coming  into  direct  contact  with  a  new 
natural  truth.  He  prayed  by  instinct,  not  by  re 
flection.  Indeed,  he  would  be  rejected  now  from 
most  churches  as  imperfect  in  the  faith  ;  but  still 
he  prayed  while  he  was  in  the  spiritual  ecstasy  of 
discovering.  He  felt  the  need  of  divine  "  help "  in 
his  human  work,  and  he  frankly  acknowledged  it. 

We  suppose  that  no  thinker  is  more  repugnant  to 
orthodox  divines  than  Ernest  Renan.  His  defects 
are  obvious ;  but  he  is  still  true  to  what  may  be 
called  the  right  side  of  the  fundamental  question  at 
present  argued  between  theologians  and  such  scien- 


RELIGION  AND  SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES.       123 

tists  as  ignore  or  deny  God.  He  accepts  the  theories 
of  development  and  evolution  without  a  question.  In 
a  remarkable  article,  contributed  some  ten  years  ago 
to  the  "  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,"  but  of  which  his 
admirers  equally  with  his  adversaries  seem  to  be 
strangely  ignorant,  he  regrets  that  he  had  not  chosen 
science  rather  than  history  for  his  work  in  life.  But, 
he  adds,  what  is  science  but  history  in  its  most  com 
prehensive  form  ?  Science  gives  the  history  of  evolu 
tion,  in  the  long  passage  of  the  nebulous  mist  into 
its  final  product,  the  brain  of  man.  That,  says 
Renan,  is  God's  method,  as  far  as  science  now  knows 
it.  But  science  shows  that,  in  the  slow  but  sure 
operation  of  natural  laws,  the  solar  system  must  be 
destroyed.  Still  the  catastrophe  is  far  from  being 
probable,  much  less  certain.  A  million  of  years  is  a 
comparatively  short  period  in  the  figures  of  astron 
omy.  If  scientific  men  have  during  the  past  hundred 
and  fifty  years  made  such  enormous  advances  in  the 
discovery,  control,  and  application  of  the  forces  of 
Nature,  why  should  they  not,  in  the  course  of  a  mil 
lion  years,  contrive  to  arrest  the  seeming  tendency 
of  our  little  solar  system  to  self-destruction  ?  In  a 
century  and  a  half  much  has  been  done ;  what  may 
not  be  done  in  ten  thousand  centuries  in  a  "  square  " 
fight  of  the  quick  faculties  of  mind  against  the  slow 
operations  of  matter  ?  A  hundred  thousand  of  cen 
turies  would  be  a  very  moderate  computation  for  any 
disturbance  which  would  knock  our  planet  to  pieces 
and  dissolve  it  into  the  shining  dust  out  of  which 


124       RELIGION  AND  SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES. 

systems  are  made.  Our  foremost  men  of  science  are 
mere  babes  in  knowledge,  as  well  as  in  power,  com 
pared  to  the  men  who  will  rise  within  the  next  thou 
sand  years,  if  science  and  invention  go  on  at  their 
present  continually  accelerated  pace.  Why,  on  this 
principle,  should  not  man  at  the  end  of  a  million 
years  obtain  control  of  the  whole  solar  system  ? 
Why  should  he  not  at  that  distant  period  be  in  the 
position  of  the  God  of  the  present  popular  theology  ? 
But  Renan  is  careful  to  add :  Man  in  this  supposed 
enormous  extension  of  his  power  over  Nature,  would 
still  find  the  Infinite  just  as  far  beyond  his  thought 
as  he  is  now,  and  just  as  near  his  soul  as  he  is  now. 
No  possible  increase  of  his  power  can  decrease  the 
sense  of  his  dependence.  The  enlargement  of  his 
knowledge  can  only  give  him  a  larger  perception  of 
the  Divine  Omniscience  ;  the  increase  of  his  power 
can  only  give  him  a  more  vivid  feeling  of  the  Divine 
Omnipotence.  Carry  out  the  principle  of  human 
progress  as  far  as  you  may,  extend  it  to  the  time 
when  man  will  be  almost  the  master  of  Nature,  and 
God  will  be  still  as  far  off  as  he  is  now,  and  the 
spiritual  nature  of  man  will  crave  him  even  more  in 
tensely  than  it  did  when  "  stocks  and  stones  "  were 
worshipped  as  divinities. 

We  have  referred  to  Renan  because  he  happens 
to  be  a  person  who  feels  the  need  both  of  the  mind 
and  the  heart.  He  is  a  "  rationalist"  of  the  extreme 
type.  He  accepts  both  the  facts  and  the  theories  of 
scientists.  But,  in  his  French  way,  he  still  softly 


RELIGION  AND  SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES.       125 

exclaims,  "  Glory  be  to  God !  "  Mild,  polite,  com 
plimentary  as  he  is  to  the  savants,  he  still  says  to 
them :  "  Gentlemen,  your  idea  of  ignoring  God  and 
the  spiritual  nature  of  man  is  Darwinism  reversed. 
You  will  conduct  us  back  to  the  monkeys,  rather 
than  aid  us  to  extend  the  space  which  separates  us 
from  them." 

In  concluding,  we  would  say  that  the  idea  of  a 
personal  and  infinite  God  is  at  the  base  of  all  re 
ligion,  as   far   as   religion   has   any  interest  to   the 
"advanced"  scientists  of  the  present  time.     Renan 
predicts  that  a  million  of  years  hence  the  scientists 
will   be   more   inclined    to   admit   this   fundamental 
truth  than  they  now  seem  disposed  to  be.     It  appears 
ridiculous  to  declare  that  God  Almighty  is  still  alive, 
and  that  our  modern  theorists  have  not  succeeded 
in  dethroning  him.     The  disciples  of  Epicurus  repre 
sented  the  gods  as  laughing  at  the  folly  and  short 
comings  of  men.     Can  we  not,  without  irreverence, 
think  of  God  as,  at  least,  smiling  at  the  vagaries  of 
the   men   that   he   has   endowed   with   exceptionally 
vigorous  powers  of  scientific  speculation  ?     He  is  ever 
lastingly  safe  from  all  attempts  of  human  beings  to 
deny  or  ignore  him ;  but  the  sceptics  are  no  less  his 
agents  than  the  believers.     He  uses  them  as  instru 
ments  to  keep  practical  piety  on  a  level  with  doctrinal 
piety.     Every  revolt  ends  in  adding  to  his  adherents. 
That  nobody  can  evade  God  is  just  as  apparent  in 
the   present  "  enlightened "   age   as   it  was   in    the 
worst  ages   of  superstition ;   and   it   will   be   as   ap- 


'126        RELIGION  AND  SCIENTIFIC  THEORIES. 

parent  millions  of  years  hence  as  it  is  now.  The 
Devil  himself  serves  Him.  Indeed,  the  Devil  is,  after 
all,  raised  up,  now  and  then,  to  teach  theologians  that 
there  is  something  in  their  doctrines  or  in  their  lives 
which  needs  to  be  corrected. 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

IT  has  been  very  well  said  that  he  has  the  best 
digestion  who  never  is  reminded  that  he  has  any 
digestion  at  all,  and  that  the  model  of  all  stomachs 
was  that  of  the  eupeptic  clodhopper,  who  devoured 
his  food  without  any  uncomfortable  after-thoughts,  or 
ever  knowing  that  he  had  any  stomach.  The  same 
principle  holds  good  of  the  body  politic,  and  it  is  a 
sign  that  something  is  out  of  the  way  in  the  social 
system  whenever  it  is  so  restless  as  to  be  continually 
feeling  its  pulse  or  looking  at  its  tongue,  and  asking 
the  doctors  what  can  be  the  matter.  Our  good  Old 
America  is  now  somewhat  in  difficulty  of  this  kind, 
and  has  painful  misgivings  lest  he  may  have  taken 
into  his  capacious  mouth  some  foreign  substances  that 
cannot  possibly  be  assimilated.  He  is  asking  him 
self  what  is  proper  food  for  himself  and  his  children, 
somewhat  more  careful  than  usual  of  the  distinction 
between  the  true  American  and  the  foreign  elements. 
Sometimes  our  ambition  has  been  to  expatriate  our 
selves  as  much  as  possible,  in  our  manners  and  habits 
at  least,  if  not  in  our  residence.  In  the  parlor  or  ball 
room  we  have  been  fond  of  being  French  ;  at  the  con 
cert  and  opera,  Italian ;  over  the  cigar  and  the  choco 
late,  Spanish  ;  after  dinner,  over  the  bottle,  not  a  few 


128  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

have  been  inclined  to  be  English ;  at  elections,  the 
fashion  has  been  somewhat  Irish  ;  in  philosophy,  Ger 
man  ;  while  a  few  inglorious  citizens  have  been  dis 
posed  to  play  the  Turk,  and,  under  the  lead  of  Joe 
Smith,  run  into  abominations  that  would  have  made 
Mohammed's  beard  curl  with  disgust.  Now  we  are  a 
little  less  ashamed  of  our  own  birth  and  breeding,  and 
our  own  natal  star  shines  out  with  new  radiance  from 
the  studded  heavens.  Some  of  our  people  have  indeed 
discovered  new  charms  in  Russia,  and  their  polar  star  is 
in  the  constellation  of  the  Great  Bear.  Not  a  few  there 
are  who  have  been  ready  to  doff  the  Hungarian  plume 
for  the  Russian  sable,  and  pledge  the  nation  to  the  Czar, 
as  before  to  the  Magyar  dictator.  But  the  most  promi 
nent  tendency  of  late  has  seemed  to  be  toward  a  more 
positive  nationality  of  our  own  ;  and  surely  the  present 
position,  as  well  as  the  intrinsic  importance  of  the  sub 
ject,  justifies  an  article  upon  the  characteristics  of  the 
true  American,  as  we  understand  them. 

We  start  in  a  very  commonplace  way,  and  maintain 
that  the  true  American  is,  first  of  all,  true  to  his  soil, 
or  to  the  land  of  his  birth  and  home.  It  is  some 
times  said,  indeed,  that  it  is  a  sorry  kind*  of  feel 
ing  that  attaches  itself  to  localities ;  that  it  is  the 
heart  of  a  cat  that  stands  by  the  mere  place,  while  the 
human  heart  goes  with  friends,  and  finds  its  home 
wherever  they  are.  For  this  very  reason  we  should 
be  true  to  our  own  country ;  for  we  look  upon  it,  not 
so  much  as  a  vast  tract  of  land,  as  the  abode  of  our 
friends,  the  sphere  of  our  labor,  and  the  inheritance 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  129 

of  our  children.  The  land  may  be,  in  fact,  called 
the  homestead  of  the  nation,  calling  out  at  once  our 
toil  and  our  tastes,  our  energy  and  our  affections  to 
till  and  beautify  its  domain.  We  may  even  go  further, 
and  say  that  the  land  is  the  physical  framework  of 
the  nation, —  the  earthly  organism  through  which  it 
develops  its  powers.  Look  at  our  country  in  this 
way,  and  instead  of  seeing  so  many  square  miles  of 
territory,  we  behold  the  limbs  and  features  of  a  gigan 
tic  physical  constitution.  The  great  lakes  and  rivers 
are  our  country's  heart  and  arteries  ;  the  mountains 
the  shoulders  and  backbone  ;  the  forests  the  lungs ; 
the  sea-coast  the  arms  ;  the  flowing  winds  and  waters, 
with  all  the  great  currents  of  trade,  are  the  healthful 
tides  of  circulation  that  feed  and  quicken  the  colossal 
brain.  Every  country  has  its  own  peculiar  form  and 
physiognomy,  and  ours  is  sufficiently  marked  to  make 
it  ours.  Bounded  by  twin  oceans  and  their  mighty 
tributary  gulfs  and  lakes,  our  America  has  a  unity 
from  God's  own  hand ;  and  what  God  hath  joined,  let 
not  man  try  to  put  asunder.  The  Mississippi,  with  its 
various  roots  and  branches,  repeats  in  every  wave  the 
compact  of  our  national  union  between  North  and 
South.  The  twin  oceans  no  longer  divide  East  and 
West.  God  has  raised  up  two  providential  men  to 
join  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  shore.  Fulton's  re 
volving  wheel  and  Franklin's  electric  wire  have  made 
San  Francisco  neighbor  to  New  York  ;  and  California 
is  but  one  of  the  pockets  of  our  great  seaports. 

The  American,  in  being  true  to  his  country,  will  be 
9 


1-30  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

true  alike  to  its  productive  utilities  and  to  its  adapta 
tion  to  beautiful  tastes.  With  him  the  useful  and  tht 
beautiful  should  be  but  different  aspects  of  the  same 
bountiful  heritage  ;  and  in  the  inarch  of  his  compre 
hensive  and  far-seeing  policy,  refinement  walks  hand 
in  hand  with  industry.  The  landscape  smiles  more 
sweetly  to  the  eye  from  the  plenty  that  is  garnered 
from  well-tilled  fields,  and '  the  trees  of  the  forest 
whisper  a  richer  blessing  when  their  murmur  joins 
with  the  voices  of  the  children  and  parents  whose 
home  rises  from  beneath  the  friendly  shade.  Let  the 
physical  resources  of  our  country  be  developed  by  our 
largest  policy  and  bravest  enterprise.  Let  the  mill- 
wheels  of  the  North  cry  out  to  the  cotton  of  the  South, 
"  Come  forth,  and  let  us  work  together,  and  weave 
for  our  country  a  nobler  tissue  than  the  loom  can  pro 
duce  !  "  Let  the  teeming  grain-fields  of  the  West 
wave  health  and  greeting  to  the  workshops  of  the 
East,  in  token  of  the  mighty  compact  between  the 
agriculture  and  the  mechanism  of  the  nation.  Let 
the  gold  that  is  washed  by  waters  from  the  Rocky 
Mountains  shout  out  to  the  iron  and  the  coal  in  the 
Alleghanies,  "  Come  forth,  and  let  us  run  such  a  race 
together  as  the  world  has  never  seen  ! "  The  gold 
giving  the  sinews,  and  the  iron  the  arms  and  feet,  and 
the  coal  the  moving  power  in  a  campaign  of  peaceful 
industry  that  shall  make  war  hide  his  diminished  head. 
By  a  due  encouragement  of  agriculture,  by  a  judicious 
protection  of  our  own  manufactures,  by  a  wary  guar 
dianship  of  our  commerce,  let  all  the  industrial  inter- 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  131 

ests  of  the  country  be  quickened  and  reconciled,  until 
America  shall  be  the  blessing  of  Americans,  without 
being  the  foe  of  any  nation  under  the  sun.  Let  beau 
tiful  tastes  follow  in  the  wake  of  wholesome  utilities. 
Let  every  man  who  cuts  down  a  tree,  where  its  place 
is  needed  for  nutritious  grain,  honor  the  beauty  that 
falls  to  the  ground,  transfer  its  grace  to  the  waving 
corn,  and  not  fail  to  plant  another  tree  wherever  its 
shade  is  needed.  Let  the  landscape-gardener,  the 
surveyor,  the  architect,  combine  their  taste  with  the 
teachings  of  Nature,  and  have  an  eye  to  radiant  health 
and  artistic  beauty,  quite  as  much  as  to  gain  and  con 
venience.  Let  the  poet  and  the  orator  not  spare  their 
gift,  nor  fail  to  weave  into  their  verse  and  eloquence  the 
names  that  stand  for  the  loveliness  and  the  grandeur 
of  our  land.  God  has  given  America  goodly  gifts,  yet 
they  have  been  too  little  developed.  Her  treasure,  like 
that  to  which  the  divine  kingdom  was  likened,  is  hid 
den  in  a  field,  and  only  he  who  tills  the  field  faith 
fully  can  find  it.  Says  that  philosopher  among  geog 
raphers,  Guyot :  "  America  looks  toward  the  Old 
World ;  all  its  slopes  and  its  long  plains  slant  toward 
the  Atlantic,  toward  Europe.  It  seems  to  wait  with 
open  and  eager  arms  the  beneficent  influence  of  the 
man  of  the  Old  World.  No  barrier  opposes  his  pro 
gress  ;  the  Andes  and  the  Rocky  Mountains,  banished 
to  the  other  shore  of  the  continent,  will  place  no  obsta 
cle  in  his  path."  Thus  invited  by  the  very  inclination 
of  the  land,  the  chosen  man  came,  and  began  to  culti 
vate  his  domain.  The  wilderness  became  a  garden. 


132  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

Stand  at  the  mouths  of  one  of  our  great  rivers  ;  look 
upon  the  forest  of  masts  at  our  wharves,  so  freighted 
or  fruited  with  the  products  of  our  soil,  to  be  ex 
changed  for  the  commodities  of  every  land  under  the 
sun ;  read  the  returns  of  our  census ;  then  speak 
not  of  the  great  things  that  America  has  done,  but 
of  the  grandeur  of  her  future  if  her  sons  are  only 
true  to  her  soil. 

Her  sons  —  who  are  her  sons  ?  They,  of  course, 
who  best  embody  her  spirit  and  carry  out  her  destiny. 
They  are  pre-eminently  the  sons  who  have  the  blood 
of  the  sires  who  made  America  our  mother.  We 
maintain,  then,  in  the  next  place,  that  the  true  Amer 
ican  is  true  to  his  blood, —  the  old  blood  that  came 
hither  from  Europe  in  the  veins  of  our  wisest  and 
strongest  colonists  (not  last  nor  least  of  whom  were 
the  pilgrims  of  the  "Mayflower,"  and  the  Dutch  of 
Manhattan,  our  own  peculiar  ancestors).  All  history 
shows  the  power  of  blood  over  circumstances  as  much 
as  agriculture  shows  the  power  of  the  seeds  over  the 
soils.  The  main  strength  of  the  American  nation  has 
come  from  the  free  people  of  Northern  Europe.  —  the 
Teutonic,  and  especially  the  Anglo-Teutonic  races, 
who  brought  liberty  and  law  to  the  New  World.  We 
are  not  disposed  to  narrow  down  our  nationality,  much 
less  our  humanity,  by  any  prejudices  of  race,  and  we 
are  ready  to  allow  that  there  has  been  a  great  deal  of 
folly  on  both  sides,  in  the  quarrel  between  the  Celtic 
and  the  Anglo-Saxon  partisans.  The  Anglo-Saxon  is 
but  one  tribe  of  that  great  division  of  the  Caucasian 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  133 

family  to  which  our  people  belong.  As  known  in  Eu 
rope,  the  Caucasian  family  has  had  three  branches,  — 
the  Celtic,  the  Teutonic,  the  Slavonic.  The  Celt  and 
the  Teuton  have  had  many  a  bloody  quarrel  with  each 
other  ;  but  of  late  much  of  their  blood  pulsated  to  the 
notes  of  the  same  martial  music,  under  the  flags  of 
France  and  England,  that  waved  together  their  de 
fiance  against  the  Slavonic  banner  floating  on  the 
the  walls  of  Sebastopol.  Of  the  three  branches,  thus 
far  the  most  vigorous  and  fruitful  in  our  modern  his 
tory  has  been  the  Teutonic,  and  those  who  have  been 
ingrafted  upon  its  stock.  Now  it  is  very  clear  that 
the  chief  portion  of  the  American  people  came  from 
the  Teutonic  branch,  no  matter  whether  —  as  in  the 
case  of  New  England,  Virginia,  and  Maryland — the 
seed  went  first  from  •  Northern  Europe  to  England, 
and  thence  to  America,  and  so  became  Anglo-Saxon  ; 
or  whether  —  as  in  the  case  of  New  York,  New  Jer 
sey,  and  Pennsylvania — it  remained  in  continental 
Europe  until  transplanted  hither  in  the  Dutch  and 
Germans.  Call  the  majority  of  our  people  Anglo- 
Teutonic,  Anglo-Gothic,  Anglo-Germanic,  or  Anglo- 
Saxon,  as  you  will.  No  matter,  if  we  only  know 
what  the  terms  mean,  and  designate  by  them  the 
descendants  of  the  Northern  Europeans  who  came  to 
America,  and  made  the  English  language  the  voice  of 
their  faith  and  their  freedom. 

Two  great  classes  of  men  appear  in  history  :  the 
one  class  impulsive,  impassioned,  tending  strongly 
toward  a  sensuous  ritual  and  a  centralized  priesthood 


134  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

and  empire  ;  more  ready  to  persuade  than  to  reason, 
to -venture  than  to  persevere;  not  a  little  prone  to 
exaggeration  alike  in  speech  and  action,  yet  full  of 
generous  enthusiasm,  and,  by  very  temperament,  elec 
tric  and  eloquent ;  the  other  class  self-poised,  delib 
erate,  jealous  of  priesthoods  and  thrones,  calculating 
the  end  carefully,  and  very  slow  to  yield  an  inch  of  the 
ground  once  taken ;  at  the  same  time  cautious  and 
courageous,  fond  of  solid  comfort,  yet  readier  far  to 
starve  than  to  beg,  and  more  quick  to  deeds  than 
words  ;  constitutionally  suspicious  of  large  talk  and 
fine  sentiment.  Of  the  former  class  the  Celt  is 
the  most  conspicuous  and  characteristic  specimen, 
whether  full  blooded,  as  in  most  of  Ireland,  and  in 
the  Scotch  Highlands,  or  modified  by  other  races,  as 
in  France,  Spain,  and  Italy.  Of  the  latter  class  the 
Anglo-Teuton,  or  the  Anglo-Saxon — if  we  must  re 
tain  the  common  but  somewhat  incorrect  word  —  is 
the  most  characteristic  specimen  that  we  can  choose 
from  the  great  Teutonic  family  to  which  he  belongs. 
It  is  he  who  has  given  our  country  most  of  its  charac 
ter,  ideas,  and  institutions.  The  Frenchman  on  our 
northern  frontier  with  his  volatile  nature,  the  Span 
iard  at  the  South  with  his  reserved,  impassioned  zeal, 
were  not  to  rule  ;  and  the  destinies  of  North  America 
were  to  be  decided  chiefly  by  the  race  that  founded 
Jamestown  and  Plymouth,  and  gave  language  and 
law  to  the  land.  If  we  are  to  distinguish  at  all  be 
tween  these  two  sets  of  English  colonists,  —  the  cava- 
liers  of  Virginia  and  the  Puritans  of  New  England, — 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  135 

we  must  rank  the  latter  as  of  the  purer  Teutonic  type, 
and  having  less  of  the  mixture  of  French  blood  which 
the  Norman  aristocracy  received  from  their  abode  in 
France  and  bequeathed  to  the  new  nobility  of  Nor 
man  England.  Yet  in  these  the  Northman's  blood 
predominated  over  the  Celtic  mixture,  and  it  may  be 
said  with  truth  that  the  main  founders  of  the  nation, 
whether  English,  or  Dutch,  or  German,  brought  with 
them  hither  the  hearts  of  freemen,  and  claimed  every 
triumph  of  popular  liberty  not  as  the  gift  of  a  strange 
bounty  but  as  the  restoration  of  an  old  right.  Our 
blood  is  free  blood,  and  has  been  so  for  ages,  during 
the  march  of  our  fathers  from  their  first  home  in  Cen 
tral  Asia  to  the  western  coast  of  Europe  and  thence 
to  America.  We  sell  our  birthright  whenever  we  sell 
our  liberty  for  any  price  of  gold  or  honor. 

Yet  follow  out  the  lessons  of  our  blood,  and  we  find 
that  our  hearts  are  not  bound  to  beat  unkindly  to 
ward  races  of  different  lineage.  The  civilization  of 
Europe  has  sprung  from  the  mingling  of  the  three 
great  races  of  the  Caucasian  family.  Who  can  spare 
from  our  literature  the  great  names  given  by  each 
branch,  who  scorn  Copernicus  because  he  was  Polish 
and  probably  Slavonic,  who  scoff  at  Dante  because 
Celtic,  and  who  refuse  to  place  them  upon  the  same 
place  of  honor  as  our  own  Milton,  and  Shakspeare, 
and  Newton  ?  Surely  the  New  World  should  not  be 
less  generous  than  the  Old  World,  and  we  are  not  to 
repeat  on  these  great  shores  the  petty  feuds  that  have 
fallen  into  disrepute  in  Europe.  There  is  room  for 


136  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

the  Celt  of  every  clime,  whether  from  Italy,  France, 
Scotland,  or  Ireland.     Of  the  latter  branch  of  the  Cel 
tic  family  we  have  had  perhaps  a  little  too  much,  es 
pecially  of  a  certain  quality.     We  have  had  too  much 
of  the  dregs  of  Erin  in  our  political  cup,  and  the  tea 
has  been  considerably  too  green  for  the  pure  Ameri 
can  taste.     But  wiry  not  cure  the  evil  in  our  own  way, 
instead  of  borrowing  any  new  tyranny  from  the  Brit 
ish  oppressor  ?     We  are  for  giving  the  Irishman  the 
same  justice  that  others  of  similar  blood  and  creed 
have  found,  and  we  are  on  this  very  ground  in  a  better 
way  to  prevent  his  doing  us  the  injustice  which  some 
of  his  bad  advisers  may  have  been  scheming.     We 
believe  that  there  is  a  providential  aspect  in  the  rela 
tion  of  the  Irish  to  America,  and  in  the  tendencies, 
old  and  new,  which  balance  their  influence.     They, 
for  the  most  part,  represent  the  form  of  worship  once 
supreme  in  Christendom,  and  thus  hold  up  for  our 
careful  study  and  practical  scrutiny  the  whole  genius 
and  history  of  ages  which  now  stand  embodied  in 
churches   and   colleges  whose  crosses  are  rising  on 
every  side  among  our  academic  halls  and  city  spires. 
The  young,  restless  heart  of  the  nation  is  thus  re 
buked  by  the  stern  rule  of  Hildebrand,  and  the  new 
science  of  Yale  and  Harvard  is  now  startled  as  by  the 
spectre  of  the  ancient  lona,  roused  from  her  sepul 
chral  sleep  in  mouldering  cells.    The  Celt  brings  hither 
a  church  that  can  teach  the  American  many  a  lesson  in 
personal  discipline  and  spiritual  experience ;  yet  he 
must  have  a  very  defective  vision  to  see  any  prospect 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  137 

of  Romanizing  the  heart  of  a  nation  in  its  whole  his 
tory  and  progress  so  indomitably  Protestant  as  ours. 
The  old  North  blood  in  our  veins  never  beat  kindly 
toward  the  Pope  ;  the  sons  of  the  sea-kings  never  had 
much  fancy  for  the  amateur  fisherman  who  professes 
to  sit  in  Saint  Peter's  chair ;  and  the  ancient  quarrel 
is  not  likely  to  be  made  up  so  long  as  the  blood  lasts. 
Yet  it  should  be  a  part  of  our  freedom  and  faith  to 
give  all  creeds  liberty  of  utterance,  and  we  are  not  in 
any  way  to  invade  the  spiritual  privileges  of  the  new 
comers  to  our  shores  because  they  are  taught  by  a 
priesthood  such  as  Charles  Carroll  recognized.  Let 
us  be  willing  to  see  the  worthy  elements  in  all 
religions,  and  not  play  the  Pharisee  in  the  name 
of  .Him  whose  gospel  came  from  the  Nazareth  that 
the  Pharisee  scorned.  If  we  fight  Rome  we  must 
fight  with  our  weapons,  which  we  understand,  and 
not  with  hers,  in  which  we  are  no  match  for  her.  If 
we  try  to  beat  the  Jesuits  by  secret  cabals  and  con 
spiracies,  they  probably  understand  that  game  better 
than  we.  The  better  way  is  to  fight  darkness  with 
light ;  and  every  morning's  sunshine  with  its  expand 
ing  radiance  teaches  the  true  policy  of  freedom  against 
spiritual  despotism.  Remember  that  the  Celt  must 
be  Americanized  in  time,  if  we  only  let  him  be, 
and  that  nothing  can  tend  more  than  personal  pro 
scription  to  arrest  the  virtually  Protestant  feeling  that 
is  already  putting  a  check  upon  priestly  interference 
in  our  financial  and  political  affairs,  and  claiming 
for  the  Roman  Catholic  people  the  right  to  hold  and 


138  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

control  ecclesiastical  property  which  they  purchase. 
France  has  put  a  check  upon  Romish  domination, 
and  her  chief  prelates  have  been  an  honor  and 
strength  to  the  nation.  May  not  American  liberty 
do  as  much  as  the  French  throne,  and  pastors  of  the 
stamp  of  Fe'nelon  and  Cheverus  here  teach  piety  to 
their  flocks  without  teaching  servitude,  and  win  souls 
to  God  without  mortgaging  our  soil  to  the  virtual  sub 
jects  of  a  Roman  king  ?  The  true  course  of  toleration 
and  caution  will  help  the  Celt  as  much  as  ourselves, 
and  the  sooner  he  learns  in  the  true  school  a  little 
of  our  own  self-reliance,  the  better  for  all  parties. 

We  must  not  forget  to  consider  the  providential 
balance  between  him  and  his  emigrant  companion  the 
German,  or  between  the  Irishman,  the  Anglo-Saxon's 
original  neighbor,  and  the  German,  so  nearly  his  kins 
man  by  common  Teutonic  origin.  It  will  be  well  for 
us  if  we  are  sagacious  in  playing  off  the  excesses  of 
the  two  against  each  other,  and  offsetting  Irish  impul 
siveness  and  zeal  for  the  priesthood  by  the  German's 
more  phlegmatic  individuality  and  political  radicalism. 
Far  more  of  a  neutralizing  power  than  we  usually 
suppose  comes  from  the  constant  battle  going  on 
between  the  more  ultra  German  democratic  organs 
and  the  Irish  Catholic  presses  in  this  country.  So 
long  as  one  party  maintains,  as  it  sometimes  does, 
that  every  church  and  all  religion  is  a  conspiracy 
against  liberty,  and  the  other  maintains,  as  it  some 
times  does,  that  all  liberty  of  opinion  is  impiety,  and 
that  a  little  burning  of  Bibles  and  Bible  readers  may 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  139 

not  always  be  a  bad  thing,  we  are  willing  that  they 
should  use  each  other  up,  confessing  that  we  feel 
somewhat  like  the  backwoodsman's  wife,  who  saw 
her  drunken  husband  fighting  with  a  bear,  and  said 
that  for  her  part  she  was  for  fair  play,  and  "  did  n't 
much  care  which  licked."  Neither,  however,  is  to 
prevail ;  and  the  old  blood,  with  its  sober  balance 
between  freedom  and  order,  is  to  carry  the  day  against 
the  new  centralization  and  the  new  anarchy. 

In  some  respects  we  may  not  be  unwilling  to  win 
advantage  from  the  new-comers  to  our  shores.  Per 
haps  our  hereditary  stiffness,  in  joint  and  manner, 
may  be  a  little  lessened  by  the  contact  with  Celtic 
enthusiasm,  and  our  tongues  may  be  loosened  by 
French  vivacity  as  much  as  our  roads  are  smoothed  by 
Irish  spades.  Perhaps,  too,  our  excessive  proneness 
to  luxury  and  ostentation  may  be  somewhat  corrected 
by  German  frugality  and  taste.  We  must  not  forget 
that  Germany  is  famous  for  something  more  than 
lager  bier,  sauerkraut,  and  tobacco-pipes,  and  that  the 
purest  art  and  the  deepest  scholarship  comes  to  us 
from  countrymen  of  Luther  and  Schiller,  who  are 
sometimes  in  danger  of  starving  on  our  shores  for 
lack  of  the  Yankee  tact  in  catching  the  nimble  dollar 
as  it  flies. 

If  fairly  understood  and  judiciously  treated,  the 
foreign  element  cannot  be  a  very  dangerous  one.  By 
the  last  census  the  foreign-born  portion  constitutes 
but  eleven  per  cent  of  our  free  population.  If  we 
make  a  rough  guess  and  divide  this  eleven  per  cent 


140  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

into  two  equal  parts,  one  would  be  nearly  all  Celtic 
and  the  other  nearly  all  Teutonic.  Thus,  of  these 
two  drops  of  blood  transfused  into  our  body  politic, 
the  one  is  more  quick  with  Celtic  oxygen,  the  other 
more  solid  with  Teutonic  nitrogen,  and  the  heart  of 
the  nation  does  not  lose  its  balance  by  the  transfusion. 
Let  that  heart  beat  bravely  in  the  good  old  way,  and 
it  will  take  the  new  elements  without  harm  into  its 
circulation.  It  is  indeed  true  that  our  patience  has 
been  sorely  tried  in  some  quarters,  and  that  it  de 
mands  of  a  native  American  no  little  philosophy  to 
keep  cool  when  he  sees  the  ignorant  horde  of  foreign 
ers  crowding  our  ballot-boxes  and  clamoring  for  our 
land  and  goods,  spending  their  earnings  in  good  times 
on  beer  and  whiskey,  and  criticising  our  soup  in  bad 
times.  We  have  been  too  long  imposed  upon  by  the 
braggadocio  of  foreign  ruffians,  and  it  is  high  time  to 
stop  their  mouths.  But  while  we  revise  our  naturali 
zation  laws,  and  demand  perhaps  longer  residence 
and  proofs  of  sufficient  education  before  admitting 
foreigners  to  citizenship,  let  us  not  forget  that  most 
of  the  difficulty  has  come  from  the  baser  sort  of  our 
own  politicians  ;  and  our  pot-house  demagogues,  aided 
perhaps  now  and  then  by  a  foxy  ecclesiastic,  have  been 
the  wire-pullers  of  the  disgraceful  business.  The  sta 
tistics  of  the  last  census  have  thrown  daylight  into 
the  political  arena,  and  it  is  the  revelation  of  the  weak 
ness  of  the  foreign  element  among  us  more  than  any 
secret  societies  that  has  raised  the  cry,  "  America  for 
Americans  !  "  —  a  cry  quite  just  if  we  define  the  term 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  141 

"  Americans "  largely  enough  to  cover  all  loyal  citi 
zens  of  our  republic,  —  lovers  of  its  liberty  and  laws. 

After  all  that  may  be  said  of  the  new  elements,  the 
old  blood  is  the  main  dependence  of  the  nation,  and 
the  coming  of  the  Anglo-European  to  this  hemisphere 
is  the  chief  event  in  history  since  the  rise  of  the  Chris 
tian  religion.  With  his  coining  came  the  union  of 
the  two  hemispheres,  so  beautifully  delineated  by  the 
poet  among  our  geographers.  America,  lithe  and 
graceful,  in  form  a  woman,  waiting,  guarded  by  twin 
oceans,  was  unconscious  of  her  mighty  destiny  that 
was  to  ally  her  with  Europe  so  remote  and  unknown, 
—  Europe,  as  a  continent,  square  and  solid,  like  the 
figure  of  a  man.  May  we  not  recall  Tennyson's  ex 
quisite  description  of  the  sleeping  beauty  as  we  think 
of  America,  our  fair  mother,  before  startled  from  her 
slumber  by  the  coming  of  her  lord  ?  — 

"  Year  after  year  unto  her  feet, 

She  lying  on  her  couch  alone, 
Across  the  purpled  coverlet, 

The  maiden's  jet-black  hair  has  grown, 
On  either  side  her  tranced  form 

Forth  streaming  from  a  braid  of  pearl  : 
The  slumbrous  light  is  rich  and  warm, 

And  moves  not  on  the  rounded  curl. 

"  She  sleeps  ;  her  breathings  are  not  heard 

In  palace  chambers  far  apart ; 
The  fragrant  tresses  are  not  stirred 
That  lie  upon  her  charmed  heart." 

In  God's  own  time  the  ocean  gates  were  passed. 
The  bravest  of  the  Europeans  won  America  for  his 


142  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

own ;  the  winds  of  heaven,  in  their  deepest  swell  and 
their  gentlest  whispers,  chanted  the  marriage  hymn ; 
and  the  race  that  sprang  from  that  union  bears  the 
best  blood  of  the  Old  World  and  the  New  in  their 
veins.  To  that  old  blood  the  true  American  will  be 
true,  or  he  parts  with  his  birthright. 

True  to  his  soil  and  to  his  blood,  he  will  be  true 
to  the  institutions  founded  upon  this  soil  by  men  of 
his  own  blood.  Whenever  those  institutions  are  in 
danger,  whether  on  the  part  of  absolutists  or  anar 
chists,  he  will  rally  under  the  old  banner  of  liberty  and 
order.  The  simple  story  of  the  rise  of  our  national 
government  is  answer  enough  to  both  classes  of  de 
structives  who  are  trying  to  undermine  its  founda 
tions.  This  nation  was  the  providential  organization 
and  growth  from  the  stock  of  our  ancestors  out  of 
this  new  country.  They  brought  with  them  its  seeds, 
or  all  the  seminal  principles  of  a  free  government. 
From  their  open  Bible  the  free  faith  of  Luther  and 
the  free  press  of  Gutenberg  held  out  to  them  a  majes 
tic  promise.  In  the  cabin  where  the  Pilgrims  signed 
their  simple  compact  of  self-government  they  put  the 
best  rights  of  the  Old  World  into  their  signature ; 
and  although,  perhaps,  they  did  not  think  of  it  at  the 
time,  Alfred  the  Great  with  his  jury,  and  the  Barons 
of  Runnymede  with  their  Magna  Charta,  held  for  them 
the  pen.  Without  any  common  theory,  the  various 
colonies,  from  their  own  spirit  and  under  the  action 
of  circumstances,  grew  into  a  nation.  To  understand 
our  government  we  must  not  begin  with  the  central 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  143 

power,  and  go  down  to  the  homes  of  the  people ;  but 
we  must  begin  with  the  households  and  neighborhoods, 
and  go  up  to  the  central  power.  The  scattered  colo 
nists  wished  to  follow  their  business,  educate  their 
children,  and  enjoy  their  religion  in  the  New  World. 
Hence  the  laws,  schools,  and  churches  of  the  town 
ships,  and  in  time  the  Confederacy  of  States.  The 
republic  grew  like  a  living  tree,  instead  of  being  hewn 
out  like  timber,  or  hammered  out  like  a  dead  stone. 
It  grew ;  and  the  Revolution  itself  was  but  one  stage 
of  a  growth  that  had  already  been  going  on  for  a 
century  and  a  half,  —  little  more,  indeed,  than  the 
dropping  of  withered  blossoms  that  the  fruit  which 
they  had  covered  might  come  to  light.  Our  laws  were 
not  paper  manufactures,  but  the  organic  expression 
of  the  public  life ;  and  our  Constitution  marched 
because  the  vitality  of  the  nation  was  in  it.  The 
Dutch  Republican,  the  Virginia  Loyalist,  the  Massa 
chusetts  Puritan,  the  Maryland  Catholic,  the  Pennsyl- 
vanian  Quaker,  all  grew  into  a  harmonious  people ; 
and  never  since  time  was  has  there  been  such  a 
national  commentary  upon  the  text,  "  Diversities  of 
gifts,  but  the  same  spirit."  The  aim  was  to  secure 
individual  liberty  and  social  order,  to  vest  in  each 
township  power  adequate  to  its  responsibility,  and  to 
delegate  to  the  central  State  and  National  Govern 
ment  no  more  than  the  needed  authority.  Thus 
wiser  than  France,  so  cursed  by  centralization  as  to 
leave  the  whole  nation  to  the  mercy  of  the  army  or 
the  mob  of  Paris ;  wiser  than  Switzerland  and  Ger- 


144  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

many,  so  broken  into  separate  dynasties  as  often  to 
afford  no  common  front,  the  United  States  of  America 
enjoy  a  Confederacy  without  centralization,  and  state 
and  town  and  individual  rights  without  disintegration 
or  anarchy  ;  at  once  free  and  strong,  independent, 
yet  united.  We  are  to  look  well  to  it  that  we  keep 
this  balance  true,  and  are  to  have  a  wary  eye  upon 
all  disorganizers,  whether  of  home  or  foreign  growth. 
Local  institutions  he  leaves  to  local  jurisdiction,  and 
national  rights  he  defends  against  local  usurpations. 
Quite  as  little  is  he  inclined  to  listen  to  destructives 
of  foreign  as  of  home  growth,  and  he  has  as  little 
affection  for  the  black-capped  Jesuit  who  stands  ready 
to  steal  away  our  individual  and  local  rights  in  the 
name  of  a  great  centralized  absolutism,  as  for  the  red- 
capped  communist  who,  under  the  pretence  of  indi 
vidual  freedom,  strikes  at  sacred  rights  of  person  and 
property  which  autocrats  have  not  dared  to  threaten. 
Their  black  and  red  are  not  our  own  true  blue. 

It  will  be  well  if  the  recent  revival  of  native  Ameri 
can  feeling  awakens  the  nation  to  a  careful  study  of 
its  own  origin,  progress,  and  organic  laws.  It  will  be 
well  if  the  general  disgust  at  the  ravings  of  the  thou 
sands  of  vagrants  who  have  recently  been  venting  their 
ignorance  and  impudence  against  our  institutions, 
leads  us  to  compare  the  organic  principles  of  our 
government  with  the  air-castle  that  some  of  their 
windy  theorists  would  put  in  its  place.  Destroy  the 
National  and  State  Senate  as  too  aristocratic,  bring 
the  people  together  to  vote  directly  upon  every  public 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  145 

question,  and,  instead  of  representatives,  have  commit 
tees  to  carry  out  the  popular  will  at  once,  —  whether 
to  declare  war,  or  to  build  a  ship,  or  coin  a  new  cent, 
—  what  a  set  of  Solons  we  should  be,  according  to 
these  radicals !  Our  State  and  National  Governments 
would  vanish  like  the  dew,  and  in  their  place  there 
would  be  an  everlasting  series  of  town  meetings,  all 
talk  and  no  action,  until  some  old-fashioned  American 
would  move  that  we  return  to  the  old  ways  of  Wash 
ington,  or  some  Cromwell  or  Napoleon  drove  out  the 
new  nonsense  with  sword  and  bayonet.  America  is 
now  an  organic  body,  a  nation  with  bones  and  mus 
cles,  compactly  joined.  Destroy  the  organism  of  the 
various  constituent  parts  that  are  harmonized  by  the 
central  life,  and  instead  of  this  compact  body  with 
each  limb  true  to  itself  and  to  the  whole,  we  should 
have  a  monstrous  mollusk,  an  animated  jelly-bag 
without  any  internal  skeleton,  like  a  flabby  sunfish 
tossed  by  the  waves,  or  an  overgrown  oyster,  having 
no  bones  but  its  shell,  and  waiting  to  be  devoured,  at 
the  breaking  of  the  shell,  by  the  first  adventurous 
sword. 

Stand  up  stoutly  for  the  doctrine  that  in  this  coun 
try  the  individual  man,  and  the  local  community,  and 
the  minor  party  are  not  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  central 
power  whether  by  democratic  or  aristocratic  usurpa 
tion,  and  we  honor  America  in  her  noblest  sphere. 
We  will  not  speak  with  contempt  or  disparagement 
of  the  decisions  of  the  majority  in  this  country,  for 
the  popular  vote  has  secured  to  us  a  degree  of  liberty 

10 


146  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

and  privilege  hitherto  unexampled  on  the  globe.  Yet 
may  we  not  be  peculiarly  proud  of  the  influence  and 
honor  accorded  by  our  people  to  the  minority  and  its 
leaders  ?  Put  upon  a  marble  stone  the  names  of  the 
leaders  who  have  opposed  the  opinions  of  the  majority, 
whether  Hamilton,  Jay,  the  Adamses,  Webster,  Clay, 
and  their  peers  among  the  dead  and  living  statesmen, 
what  man  of  any  standing  among  the  majority  would 
dare  to  deface  that  stone,  or  deny  it  the  place  of  honor 
in  the  temple  of  our  liberty  ?  Honor  to  America  for 
the  favor  here  shown  to  those  who  in  important  points 
oppose  the  popular  will.  It  is  something  to  be  proud 
of  that  so  much  of  the  ablest  thought  of  this  country 
has  been  on  the  unpopular  side,  and  the  people  have 
welcomed  in  the  Senate  hall,  the  press,  and  the  pulpit, 
powerful  thinkers,  writers,  and  orators,  who  have 
boldly  arraigned  the  current  of  popular  opinion.  Red 
Republicanism  is  prone  to  cut  off  the  heads  of  the 
opposition.  American  Republicanism  has  allowed 
the  leaders  of  the  opposition  to  hold  their  heads  as 
high  as  the  popular  favorites,  and  when  they  have 
died  it  has  shed  tears  over  their  grave,  and  the  nation 
has  put  on  mourning  for  the  bereavement.  Such  is 
the  proper  genius  of  our  institutions,  and  the  true 
American  will  honor  the  spirit  alike  in  its  freedom 
and  its  order  as  the  true  growth  upon  our  soil  from 
the  blood  which  his  fathers  brought  hither  from  the 
Old  World.  Washington,  Franklin,  Adams,  and  their 
fellows,  not  Rousseau,  Robespierre,  and  that  ilk,  laid 
the  foundation  of  our  institutions. 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  147 

Are  we  to  stop  here  and  say  nothing  of  the  reaction 
of  America  upon  Europe,  nothing  of  the  hopes  of 
humanity  and  the  world  ?  Much  might  be  said  upon 
each  branch  of  this  theme,  but  we  are  content  here 
with  making  a  single  simple  remark,  and  maintaining 
that  the  American  is  truest  to  humanity  everywhere 
when  he  most  loyally  respects  the  rights  and  the 
duties  of  men  in  his  own  personal,  social,  and  civil 
relations.  We  have  not  done  much  at  inventing 
philosophies,  and  we  do  not  claim  for  our  two  native 
American  religions,  Mormonism  and  Spirit  Rapping, 
any  divine  honors ;  but  we  may  lay  claim  to  a  civil 
order  which  aims  to  secure  to  the  individual  man  the 
largest  measure  of  privilege  enjoyed  upon  the  face  of 
the  earth.  If  we  were  to  send  to  the  Great  Exhibi 
tion  at  Paris  the  best  specimen  of  our  products,  it 
would  not  be  a  bedquilt  or  a  piano,  a  militia  major 
or  even  a  Broadway  dandy,  strong  as  might  be  the 
claims  of  the  latter  alike  as  a  natural  arid  an  artificial 
curiosity ;  but  we  should  send  a  sample  of  the  average 
culture  of  our  schools  and  homes  and  workshops,  —  a 
thrifty  Yankee  youth  who  has  been  taught  self-respect, 
faith,  and  energy  under  our  institutions,  and  who  is 
ready  to  honor  any  position  by  energy,  good  sense, 
and  right  principle.  We  hope  that  the  average  man 
among  our  native  people  would  be  found  alike  in  re 
spect  to  culture,  character,  and  power  of  independent 
bearing,  unsurpassed  by  the  average  standard  any 
where  in  history  or  among  existing  nations.  We 
do  not  claim  to  have  invented  any  native  American 


148  AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES. 

species  of  man,  and  the  red  Indian  still  keeps  Ins 
exclusive  aboriginal  specialty.  If  the  Greek  philoso 
pher  was  right  when  he  defined  man  to  be  a  two- 
legged  animal  without  feathers,  we  are  of  that  type, 
and  we  have  no  more  feathers  than  the  Greeks,  ex 
cept,  perhaps,  at  balls  and  on  training  days.  If  we 
take  the  English  chemist's  definition,  and  say  that 
"  A  man  is  a  little  less  than  fifty  pounds  of  carbon 
and  nitrogen  diffused  through  six  pailfuls  of  water," 
the  definition  applies  to  us  as  to  the  John  Bull  who 
gives  it,  although  probably  we  have  less  brandy  and 
beer  in  our  pails  of  water  than  he.  No,  we  do  not 
ask  to  have  any  new  definition  made  for  us ;  and  in 
spite  of  our  teeth,  which  are  said  to  be  dropping  two 
of  the  old-fashioned  number,  our  European  brethren 
must  be  content  to  reckon  us  of  their  type  of  human 
ity,  and  we  are  content  to  read  humanity  out  of  the 
same  old  Bible,  and  with  the  commentary  of  a  genuine 
manhood  such  as  the  old  heroes  showed.  We  have 
brought  over  from  the  old  homes  many  seeds  of  per 
sonal  and  domestic,  civil  and  religious,  blessings,  and 
we  return  the  favor  when  we  allow  them  freer  and 
fairer  growth  under  institutions  and  circumstances 
more  favorable  to  individual  well-being. 

The  old  doctrine  is  the  best  one  in  spite  of  the  new 
times,  —  the  best  now  that  Europe  is  at  our  doors  as 
well  as  when  it  was  a  far-off  and  almost  inaccessible 
country.  Sterling  character,  strong  by  self-reliance  ; 
faith,  and  industry,  guarded  by  civil  order  and  social 
economy,  —  this  is  the  best  thing  that  America  has 


AMERICAN  PRINCIPLES.  149 

shown  to  the  world,  or  is  likely  to  show.  The  great 
est  thing  that  England  ever  did,  said  Carlyle,  was 
Oliver  Cromwell.  The  greatest  thing  that  America 
ever  did  was  —  we  will  not  say  was  any  one  man  nor 
deed,  not  even  the  Revolution,  not  Congress,  but  the 
hosts  of  energetic,  honest,  faithful  men,  who  have 
believed  in  God  and  their  country,  and  brought  up 
their  families  in  the  school  and  church  as  citizens  of 
an  earthly  and  of  a  heavenly  kingdom.  This  simple, 
earnest  humanity  we  are  to  keep  both  at  home  and 
abroad  against  the  silken  follies  that  would  enslave  it 
to  a  home  luxury  and  pretension  that  Europe  hardly 
equals  ;  against  the  courtly  arrogance  that  meets  it 
abroad,  and  insists  upon  concealing  our  republican 
manhood  under  the  tinsel  pageantry  of  superannuated 
courts.  The  American  will  be  the  best  propagandist 
of  liberty  and  humanity  abroad  when  he  dares  to  be 
himself  before  foreign  courts  and  priesthoods,  and 
when  the  dignity  and  power  of  the  nation  give 
majesty  and  force  to  his  simplicity.  The  great  blow 
will  be  struck  for  the  New  World  against  the  despot 
isms  of  the  Old  World  when  Americans  dare  to  show 
a  true  light  in  face  of  foreign  oppressions.  The  worst 
foes  to  liberty  have  always  been  the  traitors  within 
its  own  camp.  Humanity  in  Europe  does  not  so 
much  ask  of  us  soldiers  for  Kossuth  and  Mazzini,  as 
citizens  trained  in  the  school  of  Washington  and 
Franklin. 


SLAVERY,    IN    ITS    PRINCIPLES,   DEVELOP 
MENT,  AND   EXPEDIENTS. 

WITHIN  the  memory  of  men  still  in  the  vigor  of  life, 
American  Slavery  was  considered  by  a  vast  majority 
of  the  North,  and  by  a  large  minority  of  the  South,  as 
an  evil  which  should,  at  best,  be  tolerated,  and  not 
a  good  which  deserved  to  be  extended  and  protected. 
A  kind  of  lazy  acquiescence  in  it  as  a  local  matter,  to 
be  managed  by  local  legislation,  was  the  feeling  of  the 
Free  States.  In  both  the  Slave  and  the  Free  States, 
the  discussion  of  the  essential  principles  on  which 
Slavery  rests  was  confined  to  a  few  disappointed  Nul- 
lificrs  and  a  few  uncompromising  Abolitionists ;  and 
we  can  recollect  the  time  when  Calhoun  and  Garrison 
were  both  classed  by  practical  statesmen  of  the  South 
and  North  in  one  category  of  pestilent  "  abstraction 
ists."  Negro  Slavery  was  considered  simply  as  a 
fact ;  and  general  irritation  among  most  politicians  of 
all  sections  was  sure  to  follow  any  attempt  to  explore 
the  principles  on  which  the  fact  reposed.  That  these 
principles  had  the  mischievous  vitality  which  events 
have  proved  them  to  possess,  few  of  our  wisest  states 
men  then  dreamed,  and  we  have  drifted  by  degrees 
into  the  present  war  without  any  clear  perception  of 
its  animating  causes. 


SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES,  ETC.          151 

The  future  historian  will  trace  the  steps  by  which 
the  subject  of  Slavery  was  forced  on  the  reluctant 
attention  of  the  citizens  of  the  Free  States,  so  that  at 
last  the  most  cautious  conservative  could  not  ignore 
its  intrusive  presence,  could  not  banish   its  reality 
from  his  eyes,  or  its  image  from  his  mind.     He  will 
show  why  Slavery,  disdaining  its  old  argument  from 
expediency,  challenged  discussion  on  its  principles. 
He  will  explain  the  process  by  which  it  became  dis 
contented  with  toleration  within  its  old  limits,  and 
demanded   the   championship   or   connivance   of   the 
National  Government  in  a  plan  for  its  limitless  ex 
tension.     He  will   indicate   the   means   by  which  it 
corrupted  the  Southern  heart  and  Southern  brain,  so 
that  at  last  the  elemental  principles  of  morals  and 
religion  were  boldly  denied,  and  the  people  came  to 
"  believe  a  lie."     He  will,  not  unnaturally,  indulge  in 
a  little  sarcasm,  when  he  comes  to  consider  the  occu 
pation  of  Southern  professors  of  ethics,  compelled  by 
their  position  to  scoff  at  the  "rights"  of  man,  and 
Southern  professors  of  theology,  compelled  by  their 
position  to  teach  that  Christ  came  into  the  world,  not 
so  much  to  save  sinners,  as  to  enslave  negroes.     He 
will  be  forced  to  class  these  among  the  meanest  and 
most  abject  slaves  that  the  planters  owned.     In  treat 
ing  of  the  subserviency  of  the  North,  he  will  be  con 
strained  to  write  many  a  page  which  will  flush  the 
cheeks    of    our    descendants   with    indignation    and 
shame.     He  will  show  the  method  by  which  Slavery, 
after  vitiating  the  conscience  and  intelligence  of  the 


152  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

South,  contrived  to  vitiate  in  part,  and  for  a  time,  the 
conscience  and  intelligence  of  the  North.  It  will  be 
his  ungrateful  task  to  point  to  many  instances  of 
compliance  and  concession  on  the  part  of  able  North 
ern  statesmen  which  will  deeply  affect  their  fame  with 
posterity,  though  he  will  doubtless  refuse  to  adopt 
to  the  full  the  contemporary  clamor  against  their 
motives.  He  will  understand,  better  than  we,  the 
amount  of  patriotism  which  entered  into  their  "  con 
cessions,"  and  the  amount  of  fraternal  good-will 
which  prompted  their  fatal  "  compromises."  But  he 
will  also  declare  that  the  object  of  the  Slave  Power 
was  not  attained.  Vacillating  statesmen  and  corrupt 
politicians  ifc  might  address,  the  first  through  their 
fears,  the  second  through  their  interests  ;  but  the  in 
trepid  and  incorruptible  "  people "  were  but  super 
ficially  affected.  A  few  elections  were  gained,  but 
the  victories  were  barren  of  results.  From  political 
defeat  the  free  people  of  the  North  came  forth  more 
earnest  and  more  united  than  ever.  The  insolent 
pretensions  of  the  Slavocracy  were  repudiated ;  its 
political  and  ethical  maxims  were  disowned ;  and 
after  having  stirred  the  noblest  impulses  of  the 
human  heart  by  the  spectacle  of  its  tyranny,  its 
attempt  to  extend  that  tyranny  only  roused  an  in 
surrection  of  the  human  understanding  against  the 
impudence  of  its  logic.  The  historian  can  then  only 
say,  that  the  Slave  Power  "seceded,"  being  deter 
mined  to  form  a  part  of  no  government  which  it 
could  not  control.  The  present  war  is  to  decide 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  153 

whether  its  real  force  corresponds  to  the  political 
force  it  has  exerted  heretofore  in  our  affairs. 

That  this  war  has  been  forced  upon  the  Free  States 
by  the  "  aggressions  "  of  the  Slave  Power  is  so  plain 
that  no  argument  is  necessary  to  sustain  the  propo 
sition.  It  is  not  so  universally  understood  that  the 
Slave  Power  is  aggressive  by  the  necessities  of  the 
wretched  system  of  labor  on  which  its  existence  is 
based.  By  a  short  exposition  of  the  principles  of 
Slavery,  and  the  expedients  it  has  practised  during 
the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years,  we  think  that  this 
proposition  can  be  established. 

And  first  it  must  be  always  borne  in  mind  that 
Slavery,  as  a  system,  is  based  on  the  most  audacious, 
inhuman,  and  self-evident  of  lies,  —  the  assertion, 
namely,  that  property  can  be  held  in  men.  Property 
applies  to  things.  There  is  a  metaphysical  impossi 
bility  implied  in  the  attempt  to  extend  its  application 
to  persons.  It  is  possible,  we  admit,  to  ordain  by 
local  law  that  four  and  four  make  ten ;  but  such  an 
exercise  of  legislative  wisdom  could  not  overcome 
certain  arithmetical  prejudices  innate  in  our  minds, 
or  dethrone  the  stubborn  eight  from  its  accustomed 
position  in  our  thoughts.  But  you  might  as  well 
ordain  that  four  and  four  make  ten  as  ordain  that  a 
man  has  no  right  to  himself,  but  can  properly  be  held 
as  the  chattel  of  another.  Yet  this  arrogant  false 
hood  of  property  in  men  has  been  organized  into  a 
colossal  institution.  The  South  calls  it  a  "  peculiar  " 
institution ;  and  herein  perhaps  consists  its  peculiar- 


154  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

ity,  that  it  is  an  absurdity  which  has  lied  itself  into 
a  substantial  form,  and  now  argues  its  right  to  exist 
from  the  fact  of  its  existence.  Doubtless  the  fact 
that  a  thing  exists  proves  that  it  has  its  roots  in 
human  nature  ;  but  before  we  accept  this  as  decisive 
of  its  right  to  exist,  it  may  be  well  to  explore  those 
qualities  in  human  nature,  "  peculiar "  and  perverse 
as  itself,  from  which  it  derives  its  poisonous  vitality 
and  strength.  It  is  plain,  we  think,  that  an  institu 
tion  embodying  an  essential  falsity,  which  equally 
affronts  the  common  sense  and  the  moral  sense  of 
mankind,  and  which,  as  respects  chronology,  was  as 
repugnant  to  the  instincts  of  Homer  as  it  is  to  the 
instincts  of  Whittier,  must  have  sprung  from  the  un 
blessed  union  of  wilfulness  and  avarice,  —  of  avarice 
which  knows  no  conscience,  and  of  wilfulness  that 
tramples  on  reason ;  and  the  marks  of  this  parentage, 
the  signs  of  these  its  boasted  roots  in  human  nature, 
are,  we  are  constrained  to  concede,  visible  in  every 
stage  of  its  growth,  in  every  argument  for  its  exist 
ence,  in  every  motive  for  its  extension. 

It  is  not,  perhaps,  surprising  that  some  of  the 
advocates  of  Slavery  do  not  relish  the  analysis  which 
reveals  the  origin  of  their  institution  in  those  dispo 
sitions  which  connect  man  with  the  tiger  and  the 
wolf.  Accordingly  they  discourage,  with  true  demo 
cratic  humility,  all  genealogical  inquiries  into  the 
ancestry  of  their  system,  substitute  generalization  for 
analysis,  and,  twisting  the  maxims  of  religion  into  a 
philosophy  of  servitude,  bear  down  all  arguments  with 


DEVELOPMENT,   AND  EXPEDIENTS.  155 

the  sounding  proposition  that  Slavery  is  included  in 
the  plan  of  God's  providence,  and  therefore  cannot  he 
wrong.  Certain  thinkers  of  our  day  have  asserted  the 
universality  of  the  religious  element  in  human  nature  ; 
and  it  must  be  admitted  that  men  become  very  pious 
when  ftieir  minds  are  illuminated  by  the  discernment 
of  a  providential  sanction  for  their  darling  sins,  and 
by  the  discovery  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  their  inter 
ests  and  passions.  Napoleon's  religious  perceptions 
were  somewhat  obtuse,  as  tried  by  the  standards  of 
the  Church,  yet  nothing  could  exceed  the  depth  of 
his  belief  that  God  "  was  with  the  heaviest  column  ; " 
and  the  most  obdurate  jobber  in  human  flesh  may 
well  glow  with  apostolic  fervor,  as,  from  the  height 
of  philosophic  contemplation  to  which  this  principle 
lifts  him,  he  discerns  the  sublime  import  of  his  provi 
dential  mission.  It  is  true,  he  is  now  willing  to  con 
cede  that  a  man's  right  to  himself,  being  given  by 
God,  can  only  by  God  be  taken  away.  "  But,"  he  ex- 
ultingly  exclaims,  "  it  has  been  taken  away  by  God. 
The  negro,  having  always  been  a  slave,  must  have 
been  so  by  divine  appointment ;  and  I,  the  mark  of 
obloquy  to  a  few  fanatical  enthusiasts,  am  really  an 
humble  agent  in  carrying  out  the  designs  of  a  higher 
law  even  than  that  of  the  State,  of  a  higher  will 
even  than  my  own."  This  mode  of  baptizing  man's 
sin  and  calling  it  God's  providence  has  not  alto 
gether  lacked  the  aid  of  certain  Southern  clergymen, 
who  ostentatiously  profess  to  preach  Christ  and  Him 
crucified,  and  by  such  arguments,  we  may  fear,  cru- 


156  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

cified  by  them.  Here  is  Slavery's  abhorred  riot  of 
vices  and  crimes,  from  whose  soul-sickening  details 
the  human  imagination  shrinks  aghast,  —  and  over 
all,  to  complete  the  picture,  these  theologians  bring 
in  the  seraphic  countenance  of  the  Saviour  of  man 
kind,  smiling  celestial  approval  of  the  multitudinous 
miseries  and  infamies  it  serenely  beholds ! 

It  may  be  presumptuous  to  proffer  counsel  to  such 
authorized  expositors  of  religion,  but  one  can  hardly 
help  insinuating  the  humble  suggestion  that  it  would 
be  as  well,  if  they  must  give  up  the  principles  of 
liberty,  not  to  throw  Christianity  in.  We  may  be 
permitted  to  doubt  the  theory  of  Providence  which 
teaches  that  a  man  never  so  much  serves  God  as 
when  he  serves  the  Devil.  Doubtless  Slavery,  though 
opposed  to  God's  laws,  is  included  in  the  plan  of 
God's  providence ;  but,  in  the  long  run,  the  providence 
most  terribly  confirms  the  laws.  The  stream  of 
events,  having  its  fountains  in  iniquity,  has  its  end 
in  retribution.  It  is  because  God's  laws  are  immuta 
ble  that  God's  providence  can  be  foreseen  as  well  as 
seen.  The  mere  fact  that  a  thing  exists,  and  persists 
in  existing,  is  of  little  importance  in  determining  its 
right  to  exist,  or  its  eventual  destiny.  These  must 
be  found  in  an  inspection  of  the  principles  by  which 
it  exists;  and  from  the  nature  of  its  principles,  we 
can  predict  its  future  history.  The  confidence  of 
bad  men  and  the  despair  of  good  men  proceed  equally 
from  a  too  fixed  attention  to  the  facts  and  events 
before  their  eyes,  to  the  exclusion  of  the  principles 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  157 

which  underlie  and  animate  them ;  for  no  insight 
of  principles,  and  of  the  moral  laws  which  govern 
human  events,  could  ever  cause  tyrants  to  exult  or 
philanthropists  to  despond. 

If  we  go  farther  into  this  question,  we  shall  com 
monly  find  that  the  facts  and  events  to  which  we 
give  the  name  of  Providence  are  the  acts  of  human 
wills  divinely  overruled.  There  is  iniquity  and  wrong 
in  these  facts  and  events,  because  they  are  the  work 
of  free  human  wills.  But  when  these  free  human 
wills  organize  falsehood,  institute  injustice,  and  es 
tablish  oppression,  they  have  passed  into  that  mental 
state  where  will  has  been  perverted  into  wilfulness, 
and  self-direction  has  been  exaggerated  into  self- 
worship.  It  is  the  essence  of  wilfulness  that  it  ex 
alts  the  impulses  of  its  pride  above  the  intuitions 
of  conscience  and  intelligence,  and  puts  force  in  the 
place  of  reason  and  right.  The  person  has  thus 
emancipated  himself  from  all  restraints  of  a  law 
higher  than  his  personality,  and  acts  from  self,  for 
self,  and  in  sole  obedience  to  self.  But  this  is  per 
sonality  in  its  Satanic  form ;  yet  it  is  just  here  that 
some  of  our  theologians  have  discovered  in  a  person's 
actions  the  purposes  of  Providence,  and  discerned  the 
Divine  intention  in  the  fact  of  guilt  instead  of  in 
the  certainty  of  retribution.  The  tyrant  element  in 
man  is  found  in  this  Satanic  form  of  his  individuality. 
His  will,  self-released  from  restraint,  preys  upon  and 
crushes  other  wills.  He  asserts  himself  by  enslaving 
others,  and  mimics  Divinity  on  the  stilts  of  diabolism. 


158  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

Like  the  barbarian  who  thought  himself  enriched  by 
the  powers  and  gifts  of  the  enemy  he  slew,  he  aggran 
dizes  his  own  personality,  and  heightens  his  own 
sense  of  freedom,  through  the  subjection  of  feebler 
natures.  Ruthless,  rapacious,  greedy  of  power,  greedy 
of  gain,  it  is  in  Slavery  that  he  wantons  in  all  the 
luxury  of  injustice,  for  it  is  here  that  he  tastes  the 
exquisite  pleasure  of  depriving  others  of  that  which 
he  most  values  in  himself. 

Thus,  whether  we  examine  this  system  in  the  light 
of  conscience  and  intelligence,  or  in  the  light  of  his 
tory  and  experience,  we  come  to  but  one  result,  — 
that  it  has  its  source  and  sustenance  in  Satanic 
energy,  in  Satanic  pride,  and  in  Satanic  greed.  This 
is  Slavery  in  itself,  detached  from  the  ameliorations 
it  may  receive  from  individual  slaveholders.  Now  a 
bad  system  is  not  continued  or  extended  by  the  virtues 
of  any  individuals  who  are  but  partially  corrupted  by 
it,  but  by  those  who  work  in  the  spirit  and  with  the 
implements  of  its  originators.  Every  amelioration  is 
a  confession  of  the  essential  injustice  of  the  thing 
ameliorated,  and  a  step  towards  its  abolition  ;  and  the 
humane  and  Christian  slaveholders  owe  their  safety, 
and  the  security  of  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  their 
property,  to  the  vices  of  the  hard  and  stern  spirits 
whom  they  profess  to  abhor.  If  they  invest  in  stock 
of  the  Devil's  corporation,  they  ought  not  to  be  severe 
on  those  who  look  out  that  they  punctually  receive 
their  dividends.  The  true  slaveholder  feels  that  he 
is  encamped  among  his  slaves,  that  he  holds  them  by 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  159 

the  right  of  conquest,  that  the  relation  is  one  of  war, 
and  that  there  is  no  crime  he  may  not  be  compelled 
to  commit  in  self-defence.  Disdaining  all  cant,  he 
clearly  perceives  that  the  system,  in  its  practical 
working,  must  conform  to  the  principles  on  which 
it  is  based.  He  accordingly  believes  in  the  lash  and 
the  fear  of  the  lash.  If  he  is  cruel  and  brutal,  it  may 
as  often  be  from  policy  as  from  disposition,  for  bru 
tality  and  cruelty  are  the  means  by  which  weaker 
races  are  best  kept  "  subordinated  "  to  stronger  races  ; 
and  the  influence  of  his  brutality  and  cruelty  is  felt  as 
restraint  and  terror  on  the  plantation  of  his  less  reso 
lute  neighbor.  And  when  we  speak  of  brutality  and 
cruelty,  we  do  not  limit  the  application  of  the  words 
to  those  who  scourge,  but  extend  it  to  some  of  those 
who  preach,  —  who  hold  up  heaven  as  the  reward  of 
those  slaves  who  are  sufficiently  abject  on  earth,  and 
threaten  damnation  in  the  next  world  to  all  who  dare 
to  assert  their  manhood  in  this. 

If,  however,  any  one  still  doubts  that  this  system 
develops  itself  logically  and  naturally,  and  tramples 
down  the  resistance  offered  by  the  better  sentiments 
of  human  nature,  let  him  look  at  the  legislation  which 
defines  and  protects  it,  —  a  legislation  which,  as  ex 
pressing  the  average  sense  and  purpose  of  the  com 
munity,  is  to  be  quoted  as  conclusive  against  the 
testimony  of  any  of  its  individual  members.  This 
legislation  evinces  the  dominion  of  a  malignant  prin 
ciple.  You  can  hear  the  crack  of  the  whip  and  the 
clank  of  the  chain  in  all  its  enactments.  Yet  these 


160  SLAVERY,   IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

laws,  which  cannot  be  read  in  any  civilized  country 
without  mingled  horror  and  derision,  indicate  a  mas 
tery  of  the  whole  theory  and  practice  of  oppression, 
are  admirably  adapted  to  the  end  they  have  in  view, 
and  bear  the  unmistakable  marks  of  being  the  work  of 
practical  men,  —  of  men  who  know  their  sin,  and 
"  knowing,  dare  maintain."  They  do  not,  it  is  true, 
enrich  the  science  of  jurisprudence  with  any  large  or 
wise  additions ;  but  we  do  not  look  for  such  luxuries 
as  justice,  reason,  and  beneficence  in  ordinances  de 
vised  to  prop  up  iniquity,  falsehood,  and  tyranny. 
Ghastly  caricatures  of  justice  as  these  offshoots  of 
Slavery  are,  they  are  still  dictated  by  the  nature  and 
necessities  of  the  system.  They  have  the  flavor  of 
the  rank  soil  whence  they  spring. 

If  we  desire  any  stronger  evidence  that  slaveholders 
constitute  a  general  Slave  Power,  that  this  Slave 
Power  acts  as  a  unit,  the  unity  of  a  great  interest 
impelled  by  powerful  passions,  and  that  the  virtues 
of  individual  slaveholders  have  little  effect  in  check 
ing  the  vices  of  the  system,  we  can  find  that  evidence 
in  the  zeal  and  audacity  with  which  this  power  en 
gaged  in  extending  its  dominion.  Seemingly  aggres 
sive  in  this,  it  was  really  acting  on  the  defensive,  — 
on  the  defensive,  however,  not  against  the  assaults  of 
men,  but  against  the  immutable  decrees  of  God.  The 
world  is  so  constituted,  that  wrong  and  oppression  are 
not,  in  a  large  view,  politic.  They  heavily  mortgage 
the  future,  when  they  glut  the  avarice  of  the  present. 
The  avenging  Providence,  which  the  slaveholder  can- 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  161 

not  find  in  the  New  Testament,  or  in  the  teachings  of 
conscience,  he  is  at  last  compelled  to  find  in  political 
economy ;  and  however  indifferent  to  the  Gospel  ac 
cording  to  Saint  John,  he  must  give  heed  to  the 
gospel  according  to  Adam  Smith  and  Malthus.  He 
discovers,  no  doubt  to  his  surprise,  and  somewhat  to 
his  indignation,  that  there  is  an  intimate  relation  be 
tween  industrial  success  and  justice ;  and  however 
much,  as  a  practical  man,  he  may  despise  the  abstract 
principles  which  declare  Slavery  a  nonsensical  enor 
mity,  he  cannot  fail  to  read  its  nature,  when  it  slowly 
but  legibly  writes  itself  out  in  curses  on  the  land. 
He  finds  how  true  is  the  old  proverb,  that,  "  if  God 
moves  with  leaden  feet,  He  strikes  with  iron  hands." 
The  law  of  Slavery  is,  that,  to  be  lucrative,  it  must 
have  a  scanty  population  diffused  over  large  areas. 
To  limit  it  is  therefore  to  doom  it  to  come  to  an  end 
by  the  laws  of  population.  To  limit  it  is  to  force  the 
planters,  in  the  end,  to  free  their  slaves,  from  an  ina 
bility  to  support  them,  and  to  force  the  slaves  into 
more  energy  and  intelligence  in  labor,  in  order  that 
they  may  subsist  as  freemen.  People  prattle  about 
the  necessity  of  compulsory  labor ;  but  the  true  com 
pulsory  labor,  the  labor  which  has  produced  the  mira 
cles  of  modern  industry,  is  the  labor  to  which  a  man 
is  compelled  by  the  necessity  of  saving  himself,  and 
those  who  are  dearer  to  him  than  self,  from  ignominy 
and  want.  It  was  by  this  policy  of  territorial  limita 
tion,  that  Henry  Clay,  before  the  annexation  of  Texas, 
declared  that  Slavery  must  eventually  expire.  The 

11 


162  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

way  was  gradual,  it  was  prudent,  it  was  safe,  it  was 
distant,  it  was  sure,  it  was  according  to  the  nature  of 
things.  It  would  have  been  accepted,  had  there  been 
any  general  truth  in  the  assertion  that  the  slave 
holders  were  honestly  desirous  of  reconverting,  at  any 
time,  and  on  any  practicable  plan,  their  chattels  into 
men.  But  true  to  the  malignant  principles  of  their 
system,  they  accepted  the  law  of  its  existence,  but  de 
termined  to  evade  the  law  of  its  extinction.  As  Slav 
ery  required  large  areas  and  scanty  population,  large 
areas  and  scanty  population  it  should  at  all  times 
have.  New  markets  should  be  opened  for  the  surplus 
slave-population ;  to  open  new  markets  was  to  acquire 
new  territory,  and  to  acquire  new  territory  was  to 
gain  additional  political  strength.  The  expansive 
tendencies  of  freedom  would  thus  be  checked  by  the 
tendencies  no  less  expansive  of  bondage.  To  acquire 
Texas  was  not  merely  to  acquire  an  additional  Slave 
State,  but  it  was  to  keep  up  a  demand  for  slaves  which 
would  prevent  Virginia,  North  Carolina,  Maryland, 
and  Kentucky  from  becoming  Free  States.  As  soon 
as  old  soils  were  worn  out,  new  soils  were  to  be  ready 
to  receive  the  curse ;  and  where  slave-labor  ceased  to 
be  profitable,  slave-breeding  was  to  take  its  place. 

This  purpose  was  so  diabolical  that,  when  first 
announced,  it  was  treated  as  a  caprice  of  certain  hot 
spirits,  irritated  by  the  declamations  of  the  Abolition 
ists.  But  it  is  idle  to  refer  to  transient  heat  thoughts 
which  bear  all  the  signs  of  cool  atrocity  ;  and  needless 
to  seek  for  the  causes  of  actions  in  extraneous  sources, 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  163 

when  they  are  plainly  but  steps  in  the  development  of 
principles  already  known.  Slave-breeding  and  Slavery- 
extension  are  necessities  of  the  system.  Like  Romulus 
and  Remus, "  they  are  both  suckled  from  one  wolf." 

But  it  was  just  here  that  the  question  became  to 
the  Free  States  a  practical  question.  There  could  be 
no  "  fanaticism  "  in  meeting  it  at  this  stage.  What 
usually  goes  under  the  name  of  fanaticism  is  the  habit 
of  uncompromising  assault  on  a  thing  because  its 
principles  are  absurd  or  wicked ;  what  usually  goes 
under  the  name  of  common  sense  is  the  disposition  to 
assail  it  at  that  point  where,  in  the  development  of  its 
principles,  it  has  become  immediately  and  pressingly 
dangerous.  Now  by  no  sophistry  could  we  of  the 
Free  States  evade  the  responsibility  of  being  the 
extenders  of  Slavery,  if  we  allowed  Slavery  to  be 
extended.  If  we  did  not  oppose  it  from  a  sense  of 
right,  we  were  bound  to  oppose  it  from  a  sense  of 
decency.  It  may  be  said  that  we  had  nothing  to  do 
with  Slavery  at  the  South ;  but  we  had  something  to 
do  with  rescuing  the  national  character  from  infamy, 
and  unhappily  we  could  not  have  anything  to  do  with 
rescuing  the  national  character  from  infamy  without 
having  something  to  do  with  Slavery  at  the  South. 
The  question  with  us  was,  whether  we  would  allow 
the  whole  force  of  the  National  Government  to  be 
employed  in  upholding,  extending,  and  perpetuating 
this  detestable  and  nonsensical  enormity,  —  espe 
cially,  whether  we  would  be  guilty  of  that  last  and 
foulest  atheism  to  free  principles,  the  deliberate  plant- 


164  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

ing  of  slave  institutions  on  virgin  soil  ?  If  this  ques 
tion  had  been  put  to  any  despot  of  Europe,  —  we  had 
almost  said,  to  any  despot  of  Asia,  —  his  answer 
would  undoubtedly  have  been  an  indignant  negative. 
Yet  the  South  confidently  expected  so  to  wheedle  or 
bully  us  into  dragging  our  common  sense  through  the 
mud  and  mire  of  momentary  expedients,  that  we 
should  connive  at  the  commission  of  this  execrable 
crime ! 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that,  if  the  question  had 
been  fairly  put  to  the  inhabitants  of  the  Free  States, 
their  answer  would  have  been  at  once  decisive  for 
freedom.  Even  the  strongest  conservatives  would 
have  been  "  Free-Soilers ; "  not  only  those  who  are 
conservatives  in  virtue  of  their  prudence,  moderation, 
sagacity,  and  temper,  but  prejudiced  conservatives,  - 
conservatives  who  are  tolerant  of  all  iniquity  which  is 
decorous,  inert,  long-established,  and  disposed  to  die 
when  its  time  comes,  —  conservatives  as  thorough  in 
their  hatred  of  change  as  Lamennais  himself.  u  What 
a  noise,"  says  Paul  Louis  Courier,  "  Lamennais  would 
have  made  on  the  day  of  creation,  could  he  have  wit 
nessed  it !  His  first  cry  to  the  Divinity  would  have 
been  to  respect  that  ancient  chaos."  But  even  to 
conservatives  of  this  class,  the  attempt  to  extend 
Slavery,  though  really  in  the  order  of  its  natural 
development,  must  still  have  appeared  a  monstrous 
innovation,  and  they  were  bound  to  oppose  the  Marats 
and  Robespierres  of  despotism  who  were  busy  in  the 
bad  work.  Indeed,  in  our  country,  conservatism3 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  165 

through  the  presence  of  Slavery,  has  inverted  its 
usual  order.  In  other  countries,  the  radical  of  one 
century  is  the  conservative  of  the  next ;  in  ours,  the 
conservative  of  one  generation  is  the  radical  of  the 
next.  The  American  conservative  of  1790  is  the  so- 
called  fanatic  of  1820  ;  the  conservative  of  1820  is 
the  fanatic  of  1856.  The  American  conservative, 
indeed,  descended  the  stairs  of  compromise  until  his 
descent  into  utter  abnegation  of  all  that  civilized 
humanity  holds  dear  was  arrested  by  the  Rebellion. 
And  the  reason  of  this  strange  inversion  of  conserva 
tive  principles  was,  that  the  movement  of  Slavery  is 
towards  barbarism,  while  the  movement  of  all  coun 
tries  in  which  labor  is  not  positively  chattelized  is 
towards  freedom  and  civilization.  True  conservatism, 
it  must  never  be  forgotten,  is  the  refusal  to  give  up  a 
positive,  though  imperfect  good,  for  a  possible,  but 
uncertain  improvement :  in  the  United  States  it  has 
been  misused  to  denote  the  cowardly  surrender  of  a 
positive  good  from  a  fear  to  resist  the  innovations  of 
an  advancing  evil  and  wrong. 

There  was,  therefore,  little  danger  that  Slavery 
would  be  extended  through  the  conscious  thought  and 
will  of  the  people,  but  there  was  danger  that  its  ex 
tension  might,  somehow  or  other,  occur.  Misconcep 
tion  of  the  question,  devotion  to  party  or  the  memory 
of  party,  prejudice  against  the  men  who  more  imme 
diately  represented  the  Antislavery  principle,  might 
make  the  people  unconsciously  slide  into  this  crime. 
And  it  must  be  said  that  for  the  divisions  in  the  Free 


166  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

States  as  to  the  mode  in  which  the  free  sentiment  of 
the  people  should  operate,  the  strictly  Antislavery 
men  were  to  some  extent  responsible.  It  is  difficult 
to  convince  an  ardent  reformer  that  the  principle  for 
which  he  contends,  being  impersonal,  should  be  puri 
fied  from  the  passions  and  whims  of  his  own  person 
ality.  The  more  fervid  he  is,  the  more  he  is  identified 
in  the  public  mind  with  his  cause ;  and,  in  a  large 
view,  he  is  bound  not  merely  to  defend  his  cause,  but 
to  see  that  the  cause,  through  him,  does  not  become 
offensive.  Men  are  ever  ready  to  dodge  disagreeable 
duties  by  converting  questions  of  principles  into  criti 
cisms  on  the  men  who  represent  principles ;  and  the 
men  who  represent  principles  should  therefore  look  to 
it  that  they  make  no  needless  enemies  and  give  no 
needless  shock  to  public  opinion  for  the  purpose  of 
pushing  pet  opinions,  wreaking  personal  grudges,  or 
gratifying  individual  antipathies.  The  artillery  of 
the  North  has  heretofore  played  altogether  too  much 
on  Northerners. 

But  to  return.  The  South  expected  to  fool  the 
North  into  a  compliance  with  its  designs,  by  availing 
itself  of  the  divisions  among  its  professed  opponents, 
and  by  dazzling  away  the  attention  of  the  people  from 
the  real  nature  of  the  wickedness  to  be  perpetrated. 
Slavery  was  to  be  extended,  and  the  North  was  to  be 
an  accomplice  in  the  business;  but  the  Slave  Power 
did  not  expect  that  we  should  be  active  and  enthusi 
astic  in  this  work  of  self-degradation.  It  did  not  ask 
us  to  extend  Slavery,  but  simply  to  allow  its  exten- 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  167 

sion  to  occur  ;  and  in  this  appeal  to  our  moral  timid 
ity  and  moral  laziness,  it  contemptuously  tossed  us  a 
few  fig-leaves  of  fallacy  and  false  statement  to  save 
appearances. 

We  were  informed,  for  instance,  that  by  the  equality 
of  men  is  meant  the  equality  of  those  whom  Provi 
dence  has  made  equal.  But  this  is  exactly  the  sense 
in  which  no  sane  man  ever  understood  the  doctrine  of 
equality ;  for  Providence  has  palpably  made  men  un 
equal,  —  white  men  as  well  as  black. 

Then  we  were  told  that  the  white  and  black  races 
could  dwell  together  only  in  the  relation  of  masters 
and  slaves,  —  and,  in  the  same  breath,  that  in  this  re 
lation  the  slaves  were  steadily  advancing  in  civiliza 
tion  and  Christianity.  But  if  steadily  advancing  in 
civilization  and  Christianity,  the  time  must  inevitably 
come  when  they  would  not  submit  to  be  slaves ;  and 
then  what  becomes  of  the  statement  that  the  white 
and  black  races  cannot  dwell  together  as  freemen? 
Why  boast  of  their  improvement,  when  you  are  im 
proving  them  only  that  you  may  exterminate  them,  or 
they  you  f 

Then,  with  a  composure  of  face  which  touches  the 
exquisite  in  effrontery,  we  were  assured  that  this  an 
tithesis  of  master  and  slave,  of  tyrant  and  abject  na 
tures,  is  really  a  perfect  harmony.  Slavery  —  so  said 
these  logicians  of  liberticide  —  has  solved  the  great 
social  problem  of  the  working-classes,  comfortably  for 
capital,  happily  for  labor ;  and  has  effected  this  by  an 
ingenious  expedient  which  could  have  occurred  only 


168  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

to  minds  of  the  greatest  depth  and  comprehension,  the 
expedient,  namely,  of  enslaving  labor.  Now,  doubt 
less  there  has  always  been  a  struggle  between  em 
ployers  and  employed,  and  this  struggle  will  probably 
continue  until  the  relations  between  the  two  are  more 
humane  and  Christian.  But  Slavery  exhibits  this 
struggle  in  its  earliest  and  most  savage  stage,  —  a 
stage  answering  to  the  rude  energies  and  still  ruder 
conceptions  of  barbarians.  The  issue  of  the  struggle, 
it  is  plain,  will  not  be  that  capital  will  own  labor,  but 
that  labor  will  own  capital,  and  no  man  be  owned. 

Still  we  were  vehemently  told  that,  though  the 
slaves,  for  their  own  good,  were  deprived  of  their 
rights  as  men,  they  were  in  a  fine  state  of  physical 
comfort.  This  was  not  and  could  not  be  true;  but 
even  if.  it  were,  it  only  represented  the  slaveholder  as 
addressing  his  slave  in  some  such  words  of  derisive 
scorn  as  Byron  hurls  at  Duke  Alphonso,  — 

"  Thou  !  born  to  eat,  and  be  despised,  and  die, 
Even  as  the  brutes  that  perish,"  — 

though  we  doubt  if  he  could  truly  add, — 

"  save  that  thou 
Hast  a  more  splendid  trough  and  wider  sty." 

Then  we  were  solemnly  warned  of  our  patriotic  duty 
to  "know  no  North  and  no  South."  This  was  the 
very  impudence  of  ingratitude  ;  for  we  had  long  known 
no  North,  and  unhappily  had  known  altogether  too 
much  South. 

Then  we  were  most  plaintively  adjured  to  comply 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  169 

with  the  demands  of  the  Slave  Power,  in  order  to  save 
the  Union.  But  how  save  the  Union  ?  Why,  by  vio 
lating  the  principles  on  which  the  Union  was  formed, 
and  scouting  the  objects  it  was  intended  to  serve. 

But  lastly  came  the  question,  on  which  the  South 
confidently  relied  as  a  decisive  argument,  "  What 
could  we  do  with  our  slaves,  provided  we  emancipated 
them  ? "  The  peculiarity  which  distinguished  this 
question  from  all  other  interrogatories  ever  addressed 
to  human  beings  was  this,  that  it  was  asked  for  the 
purpose  of  not  being  answered.  The  moment  a  reply 
was  begun,  the  ground  was  swiftly  shifted,  and  we 
were  overwhelmed  with  a  torrent  of  words  about  State 
Rights  and  the  duty  of  minding  our  own  business. 

But  it  is  needless  to  continue  the  examination  of 
these  substitutes  and  apologies  for  fact  and  reason, 
especially  as  their  chief  characteristic  consisted  in 
their  having  nothing  to  do  with  the  practical  question 
before  the  people.  They  were  thrown  out  by  the 
interested  defenders  of  Slavery,  North  and  South, 
to  divert  attention  from  the  main  issue.  In  the  fine 
felicity  of  their  inappropriateness  to  the  actual  condi 
tion  of  the  struggle  between  the  Free  and  Slave  States, 
they  were  almost  a  match  for  that  renowned  sermon, 
preached  by  a  metropolitan  bishop  before  an  asylum 
for  the  blind,  the  halt,  and  the  legless,  on  "  The  Moral 
Dangers  of  Foreign  Travel.'7  But  still  they  were  in 
finitely  mischievous,  considered  as  pretences  under 
which  Northern  men  could  skulk  from  their  duties, 
and  as  sophistries  to  lull  into  a  sleepy  acquiescence  the 


170  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

consciences  of  those  political  adventurers  who  are  al 
ways  seeking  occasions  for  being  tempted  and  reasons 
for  being  rogues.  They  were  all  the  more  influen 
tial  from  the  circumstance  that  their  show  of  argu 
ment  was  backed  by  the  solid  substance  of  patronage. 
These  false  facts  and  bad  reasons  were  the  keys  to 
many  fat  offices.  The  South  had  succeeded  in  insti 
tuting  a  new  political  test ;  namely,  that  no  man  is 
qualified  to  serve  the  United  States  unless  he  is  the 
champion  or  the  sycophant  of  the  Slave  Power.  Pro 
scription  to  the  friends  of  American  freedom,  honors 
and  emoluments  to  the  friends  of  American  slavery, 
—  adopt  that  creed,  or  you  did  not  belong  to  any 
"  healthy  "  political  organization !  Now  we  have  heard 
of  civil  disabilities  for  opinion's  sake  before.  In  some 
countries  no  Catholics  are  allowed  to  hold  office,  in 
others  no  Protestants,  in  others  no  Jews.  But  it  is 
not,  we  believe,  in  Protestant  countries  that  Protes 
tants  are  proscribed ;  it  is  not  in  Catholic  countries 
that  Catholics  are  incompetent  to  serve  the  State.  It 
was  left  for  a  free  country  to  establish,  practically, 
civil  disabilities  against  freemen,  —  for  Republican 
America  to  proscribe  Republicans !  Think  of  it,  — 
that  no  American,  whatever  his  worth,  talents,  or 
patriotism,  could  two  years  ago  serve  his  country  in 
any  branch  of  its  executive  administration,  unless  he 
was  unfortunate  enough  to  agree  with  the  slavehold 
ers,  or  base  enough  to  sham  an  agreement  with  them ! 
The  test,  at  Washington,  of  political  orthodoxy  was 
modelled  on  the  pattern  of  the  test  of  religious  ortho- 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  171 

doxy  established  by  Napoleon's  minister  of  police. 
u  You  are  not  orthodox,"  he  said  to  a  priest.  "  In 
what,"  inquired  the  astonished  ecclesiastic,  "have  I 
sinned  against  orthodoxy  ? "  "  You  have  not  pro 
nounced  the  eulogium  of  the  Emperor,  or  proved  the 
righteousness  of  the  conscription." 

Now  we  had  been  often  warned  of  the  danger  of 
sectional  parties,  on  account  of  their  tendency  to  break 
up  the  Government.  The  people  gave  heed  to  this 
warning ;  for  here  was  a  sectional  party  in  possession 
of  the  Government.  We  had  been  often  advised  not 
to  form  political  combinations  on  one  idea.  The  peo 
ple  gave  heed  to  this  advice ;  for  here  was  a  trium 
phant  political  combination,  formed  not  only  on  one 
idea,  but  that  the  worst  idea  that  ever  animated  any 
political  combination.  Here  was  an  association  of 
three  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  persons,  spread  over 
some  nine  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  square  miles  of 
territory,  and  wielding  its  whole  political  power,  en 
gaged  in  the  work  of  turning  the  United  States  into 
a  sort  of  slave  plantation,  of  which  they  were  to  be 
overseers.  We  opposed  them  by  argument,  passion, 
and  numerical  power  ;  and  they  read  us  long  homilies 
on  the  beauty  of  law  and  order,  —  order  sustained  by 
Border  Ruffians,  law  which  was  but  the  legalizing  of 
criminal  instincts,  —  law  and  order  which,  judged  by 
the  code  established  for  Kansas,  seemed  based  on  legis 
lative  ideas  imported  from  the  Feejee  Islands.  We 
opposed  them  again,  and  they  talked  to  us  about  the 
necessity  of  preserving  the  Union ;  as  if,  in  the  Free 


172  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

States,  the  love  of  the  Union  had  not  been  a  principle 
and  a  passion,  proof  against  many  losses,  and  insensi 
ble  to  many  humiliations ;  as  if,  with  our  teachers, 
disunion  had  not  been  for  half  a  century  a  stereotyped 
menace  to  scare  us  into  compliance  with  their  rascali 
ties  ;  as  if  it  were  not  known  that  only  so  long  as  they 
could  wield  the  powers  of  the  National  Government 
to  accomplish  their  designs,  were  they  loyal  to  the 
Union  !  We  opposed  them  again,  and  they  clamored 
about  their  Constitutional  rights  and  our  Constitu 
tional  obligations ;  but  they  adopted  for  themselves  a 
theory  of  the  Constitution  which  made  each  State  the 
judge  of  the  Constitution  in  the  last  resort,  while  they 
held  us  to  that  view  of  it  which  made  the  Supreme 
Court  the  judge  in  the  last  resort.  Written  constitu 
tions,  by  a  process  of  interpretation,  are  always  made 
to  follow  the  drift  of  great  forces ;  they  are  twisted 
and  tortured  into  conformity  with  the  views  of  the 
power  dominant  in  the  State  ;  and  our  Constitution, 
originally  a  charter  of  freedom,  was  converted  into  an 
instrument  which  the  slaveholders  seemed  to  possess 
by  right  of  squatter  sovereignty  and  eminent  domain. 
Did  any  one  suppose  that  we  could  retard  the  ever 
onward  movement  of  their  unscrupulous  force  and 
defiant  wills  by  timely  compromises  and  concessions  ? 
Every  compromise  we  made  with  them  only  stimu 
lated  their  rapacity,  heightened  their  arrogance,  in 
creased  their  demands.  Every  concession  we  made 
to  their  insolent  threats  was  only  a  step  downwards 
to  a  deeper  abasement ;  and  we  parted  with  our  most 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  173 

cherished  convictions  of  duty  to  purchase,  not  their 
gratitude,  but  their  contempt.     Every  concession,  too, 
weakened  us  and  strengthened  them  for  the  inevitable 
struggle  into  which  the  Free  States  were  eventually 
goaded,  to  preserve  what  remained  of  their  dignity, 
their  honor,  and  their  self-respect.     In  1850  we  con 
ceded  the  application  of  the  Wilmot  Proviso ;  in  1856 
we  were  compelled  to  concede  the  principle  of  the 
Wilmot  Proviso.    In  1850  we  had  no  fears  that  slaves 
would  enter  New  Mexico  ;  in  1861  we  were  threatened 
with  a  view  of  the  flag  of  the  rattlesnake  floating  over 
Faneuil  Hall.     If  any  principle  has  been  established 
by  events,  with  the  certainty  of  mathematical  demon 
stration,  it  is  this,  that  concession  to  the  Slave  Power 
is  the  suicide  of  Freedom.     We  are  purchasing  this 
fact  at  the  expense  of  arming  five  hundred  thousand 
men   and   spending  a  thousand  millions  of  dollars. 
More  than  this,  if  any  concessions  were  to  be  made, 
they  ought,  on  all  principles  of  concession,  to  have 
been  made  to  the  North.     Concessions,  historically, 
are  not  made  by  freedom  to  privilege,  but  by  privi 
lege  to  freedom.     Thus  King  John  conceded  Magna 
Charta;  thus  King  Charles  conceded  the  Petition  of 
Right ;    thus  Protestant  England  conceded   Catholic 
Emancipation  to  Ireland ;   thus  aristocratic  England 
conceded  the  Reform  Bill  to  the  English  middle  class. 
And  had  not  we,  the  misgoverned  many,  a  right  to 
demand  from  the  slaveholders,  the   governing  few, 
some   concessions   to  our   sense   of  justice  and  our 
prejudices  for  freedom  ?     Concession  indeed !     If  any 


174  SLAVERY,   IN   ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

class  of  men  hold  in  their  grasp  one  of  the  dear- 
bought  chartered  "  rights  of  man,"  it  is  infamous  to 
concede  it. 

"  Make  it  the  darling  of  your  precious  eye  ! 
To  lose  or  give  't  away  were  such  perdition. 
As  nothing  else  could  match." 

Considerations  so  obvious  as  these  could  not,  by 
any  ingenuity  of  party-contrivance,  be  prevented  from 
forcing  themselves  by  degrees  into  the  minds  of  the 
great  body  of  the  voters  of  the  Free  States.  The  com 
mon  sense,  the  "  large  roundabout  common  sense  "  of 
the  people,  slowly,  and  somewhat  reluctantly,  came  up 
to  the  demands  of  the  occasion.  The  sophistries  and 
fallacies  of  the  Northern  defenders  of  the  pretensions 
of  the  slaveholding  sectional  minority  were  gradually 
exposed,  and  were  repudiated  in  the  lump.  The  con 
viction  was  implanted  in  the  minds  of  the  people  of 
the  Free  States,  that  the  Slave  Power,  representing 
only  a  thirtieth  part  of  the  population  of  the  Slave 
States,  and  a  ninth  part  of  the  property  of  the  coun 
try,  was  bent  on  governing  the  nation,  and  on  subor 
dinating  all  principles  and  all  interests  to  its  own. 
Not  being  ambitious  of  having  the  United  States 
converted  into  a  Western  Congo,  with  the  traffic  in 
"  niggers  "  as  its  fundamental  idea,  the  people  elected 
Abraham  Lincoln,  in  a  perfectly  Constitutional  way, 
President.  As  the  majority  of  the  House  of  Represen 
tatives,  of  the  Senate,  and  of  the  Supreme  Court  was 
still  left,  by  this  election,  on  the  side  of  the  "  rights  of 
the  South"  (humorously  so  styled),  and  as  the  Presi- 


DEVELOPMENT,   AND  EXPEDIENTS.  175 

dent  could  do  little  to  advance  Republican  principles 
with  all  the  other  branches  of  the  Government  op 
posed  to  him,  the  people  naturally  imagined  that  the 
slaveholders  would  acquiesce  in  their  decision. 

But  such  was  not  the  result.  The  election  was  in 
November.  The  new  President  could  not  assume  of 
fice  until  March.  The  triumphs  of  the  Slave  Power 
had  been  heretofore  owing  to  its  willingness  and 
readiness  to  peril  everything  on  each  question  as  it 
arose,  and  each  event  as  it  occurred.  South  Carolina, 
perhaps  the  only  one  of  the  Slave  States  that  was 
thoroughly  in  earnest,  at  once  "  seceded."  The  "  Gulf 
States  "  and  others  followed  its  example,  not  so  much 
from  any  fixed  intention  of  forming  a  Southern  Con 
federacy  as  for  the  purpose  of  intimidating  the  Free 
States  into  compliance  with  the  extreme  demands  of 
the  South.  The  Border  Slave  States  were  avowedly 
neutral  between  the  "  belligerents,"  but  indicated  their 
purpose  to  stand  by  their  "  Southern  brethren,"  in 
case  the  Government  of  the  United  States  attempted 
to  carry  out  the  Constitution  and  the  laws  in  the 
seceded  States  bty  the  process  of  "  coercion." 

The  combination  was  perfect.  The  heart  of  the 
Rebellion  was  in  South  Carolina,  a  State  whose  free 
population  was  about  equal  to  that  of  the  city  of 
Brooklyn,  and  whose  annual  productions  were  ex 
ceeded  by  those  of  Essex  County,  in  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  Around  this  centre  was  congregated 
as  base  a  set  of  politicians  as  ever  disgraced  human 
nature.  A  conspiracy  was  formed  to  compel  a  first- 


176  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

class  power,  representing  thirty  millions  of  people,  to 
submit  to  the  dictation  of  about  three  hundred  thou 
sand  of  its  citizens.  The  conspirators  did  not  dream 
of  failure.  They  were  sure,  as  they  thought,  of  the 
Gulf  States  and  of  the  Border  States,  of  the  whole 
Slave  Power,  in  fact.  They  also  felt  sure  of  that 
large  minority  in  the  Free  States  which  had  formerly 
acted  with  them,  and  obeyed  their  most  humiliating 
behests.  They  therefore  entered  the  Congress  of  the 
nation  with  a  confident  front,  knowing  that  President 
Buchanan  and  the  majority  of  his  Cabinet  were  prac 
tically  on  their  side.  Before  Mr.  Lincoln  could  be 
inaugurated  they  imagined  they  could  accomplish  all 
their  designs,  and  make  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  a  Pro-slavery  power  in  the  eyes  of 
all  the  nations  of  the  world.  Mr.  Calhoun's  paradoxes 
had  heretofore  been  indorsed  only  by  majorities  in 
the  national  legislature  and  by  the  Supreme  Court. 
What  a  victory  it  would  be,  if,  by  threatening  rebellion, 
they  could  induce  the  people  of  the  United  States  to 
incorporate  those  paradoxes  into  the  fundamental  law 
of  the  nation,  dominant  over  both  Congress  and  the 
Court !  All  their  previous  "  compromises  "  had  been 
merely  legislative  compromises,  which,  as  their  cause 
advanced,  they  had  themselves  annulled.  They  now 
seized  the  occasion,  when  the  "  people "  had  risen 
against  them,  to  compel  the  people  to  sanction  their 
most  extreme  demands.  They  determined  to  convert 
defeat,  sustained  at  the  polls,  into  a  victory  which 
would  have  far  transcended  any  victory  they  might 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  177 

have  gained  by  electing  their  candidate,  Breckinridge, 
as  President. 

A  portion  of  the  Republicans,  seeing  clearly  the 
force  arrayed  against  them,  and  disbelieving  that  the 
population  of  the  Free  States  would  be  willing,  en 
masse,  to  sustain  the  cause  of  free  labor  by  force  of 
arms,  tried  to  avert  the  blow  by  proposing  a  new 
compromise.  Mr.  Seward,  the  calmest,  most  mod 
erate,  and  most  obnoxious  statesman  of  the  Republi 
can  party,  offered  to  divide  the  existing  territories  of 
the  United  States  by  the  Missouri  line,  all  south  of 
which  should  be  open  to  slave  labor.  As  he  at  the 
same  time  stated  that  by  natural  laws  the  South 
could  obtain  no  material  advantage  by  his  seeming 
concession,  the  concession  only  made  him  enemies 
among  the  uncompromising  champions  of  the  Wilmot 
Proviso.  The  conspirators  demanded  that  the  Mis 
souri  line  should  be  the  boundary,  not  only  between 
the  Territories  which  the  United  States  then  pos 
sessed,  but  between  the  Territories  they  might  here 
after  acquire.  As  the  country  north  of  the  Missouri 
line  was  held  by  powerful  European  States  which 
it  would  be  madness  to  offend,  and  as  the  country 
south  of  that  line  was  held  by  feeble  States  which 
it  would  be  easy  to  conquer,  no  Northern  or  West 
ern  statesman  could  vote  for  such  a  measure  with 
out  proving  himself  a  rogue  or  a  simpleton.  Hence 
all  measures  of  "  compromise  "  necessarily  failed  dur 
ing  the  last  days  of  the  administration  of  James 

Buchanan. 

12 


178  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

It  is  plain,  that,  when  Mr.  Lincoln  —  after  having 
escaped  assassination  from  the  "  Chivalry  "  of  Mary 
land,  and  after  having  been  subjected  to  a  virulence 
of  invective  such  as  no  other  President  had  incurred 
—  arrived  at  Washington,  his  mind  was  utterly  un 
affected  by  the  illusions  of  passion.     His  Inaugural 
Message  was  eminently  moderate.     The  Slave  Power, 
having  failed  to  delude  or  bully  Congress,  or  to  in 
timidate  the  people,  —  having  failed  to  murder  the 
elected  President  on  his  way  to  the  capital,  —  was 
at   its  wits'  end.     It  thought  it  could   still  rely  on 
its  Northern  supporters,  as   James   II.   of   England 
thought  he  could   rely  on   the  Church   of   England. 
While  the  nation,  therefore,  was  busy  in  expedients 
to  call  back  the  seceded  States  to  their  allegiance, 
the  latter  suddenly  bombarded   Fort  Sumter,  tram 
pled  on  the  American  flag,  threatened  to  wave  the 
rattlesnake  rag  over  Faneuil  Hall,  and  to  make  the 
Yankees  "  smell  Southern  powder  and  feel  Southern 
steel."     All   this  was   done  with  the  idea  that   the 
Northern  "  Democracy  "  would  rally  to  the  support  of 
their  "  Southern  brethren."     The  result  proved  that 
the  South  was,  in  the  words  of  Mr.  Davis's  last  and 
most  melancholy  Message,  the  victim  of  "  misplaced 
confidence"  in  its  Northern  "  associates."     The  mo 
ment  a  gun  was  fired,  the  honest  Democratic  voters 
of  the  North  were  even  more  furious  than  the  Repub 
lican  voters  ;   the  leaders,  including  those  who  had 
been  the  obedient  servants  of  Slavery,  were  ravenous 
for  commands  in  the  great  army  which  was  to  "  co- 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  179 

erce "  and  "  subjugate "  the  South ;  and  the  whole 
organization  of  the  "  Democratic  party  "  of  the  North 
melted  away  at  once  in  the  fierce  fires  of  a  re 
awakened  patriotism.  The  slaveholders  ventured 
everything  on  their  last  stake,  and  lost.  A  North, 
for  the  first  time,  sprang  into  being ;  and  it  issued, 
like  Minerva  from  the  brain  of  Jove,  full-armed.  The 
much-vaunted  engineer,  Beauregard,  was  "  hoist  with 
his  own  petard." 

Now  that  the  slaveholders  have  been  so  foolish 
as  to  appeal  to  physical  force,  abandoning  their 
vantage-ground  of  political  influence,  they  must  be 
not  only  politically  overthrown,  but  physically  humili 
ated.  Their  arrogant  sense  of  superiority  must  be 
beaten  out  of  them  by  main  force.  The  feeling  with 
which  every  Texan  and  Arkansas  bully  and  assassin 
regarded  a  Northern  mechanic  —  a  feeling  akin  to 
that  with  which  the  old  Norman  robber  looked  on  the 
sturdy  Saxon  laborer — must  be  changed,  by  showing 
the  bully  that  his  bowie-knife  is  dangerous  only  to 
peaceful,  and  is  imbecile  before  armed  citizens.  The 
Southerner  has  appealed  to  force,  and  force  he  should 
have,  until,  by  the  laws  of  force,  he  is  not  only 
beaten,  but  compelled  to  admit  the  humiliating  fact. 
That  he  is  not  disposed  "to  die  in  the  last  ditch," 
that  he  has  none  of  the  practical  heroism  of  des 
peration,  is  proved  by  the  actual  results  of  battles. 
When  defeated,  and  his  means  of  escape  are  such  as 
only  desperation  can  surmount,  he  quickly  surren 
ders,  and  is  even  disposed  to  take  the  oath  of  alle- 


180  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

glance.  The  martial  virtues  of  the  common  European 
soldier  he  has  displayed  in  exceedingly  scanty  meas 
ure  in  the  present  conflict.  He  has  relied  on  engi 
neers  ;  and  the  moment  his  fortresses  are  turned  or 
stormed,  he  retreats  or  becomes  a  prisoner  of  war. 
Let  Mr.  Davis's  Message  to  the  Confederate  Congress, 
and  his  order  suspending  Pillow  and  Floyd,  testify  to 
this  unquestionable  statement.  Even  if  we  grant 
martial  intrepidity  to  the  members  of  the  Slavocracy, 
the  present  war  proves  that  the  system  of  Slavery  is 
not  one  which  develops  martial  virtues  among  the 
"  free  whites  "  it  has  cajoled  or  forced  into  its  hateful 
service.  Indeed,  the  armies  of  Jefferson  Davis  are 
weak  on  the  same  principle  on  which  the  slave-system 
is  weak.  Everything  depends  on  the  intelligence  and 
courage  of  the  commanders,  and  the  moment  these 
fail  the  soldiers  become  a  mere  mob. 

American  Slavery,  by  the  laws  which  control  its 
existence,  first  rose  from  a  local  power,  dominant  in 
certain  States,  to  a  national  power,  assuming  to  domi 
nate  over  the  United  States.  At  the  first  faint  fact 
which  indicated  the  intention  of  the  Free  States  to 
check  its  progress  and  overturn  its  insolent  dominion, 
it  rebelled.  The  rebellion  now  promises  to  be  a  fail 
ure  ;  but  it  will  cost  the  Free  States  the  arming  of 
half  a  million  of  men  and  the  spending  of  a  thousand 
millions  of  dollars  to  make  it  a  failure.  Can  we  af 
ford  to  trifle  with  the  cause  which  produced  it  ?  We 
note  that  some  of  the  representatives  of  the  loyal 
Slave  States  in  Congress  are  furious  to  hang  individ- 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  181 

ual  Rebels,  but  at  the  same  time  are  anxious  to  sur 
round  the  system  those  Rebels  represent  with  new 
guaranties.  When  they  speak  of  Jeff.  Davis  and  his 
crew,  their  feeling  is  as  fierce  as  that  of  Tilly  and 
Pappenheim  towards  the  Protestants  of  Germany. 
They  would  burn,  destroy,  confiscate,  and  kill  with 
out  any  mercy,  and  without  any  regard  to  the  laws 
of  civilized  war;  but  when  they  come  to  speak  of 
Slavery,  their  whole  tone  is  changed.  They  wish  us 
to  do  everything  barbarous  and  inhuman,  provided 
we  do  not  go  to  the  last  extent  of  barbarity  and  in 
humanity,  which,  according  to  their  notions,  is,  to 
inaugurate  a  system  of  freedom,  equality,  and  justice. 
Provided  the  negro  is  held  in  bondage  and  denied  the 
rights  of  human  nature,  they  are  willing  that  any 
severity  should  be  exercised  towards  his  rebellious 
master.  Now  we  have  no  revengeful  feeling  towards 
the  master  at  all.  We  think  that  he  is  a  victim  as 
well  as  an  oppressor.  We  wish  to  emancipate  the 
master  as  well  as  the  slave,  and  we  think  that  thou 
sands  of  masters  are  persons  who  merely  submit  to 
the  conditions  of  labor  established  in  their  respective 
localities.  Our  opposition  is  directed,  not  against 
Jefferson  Davis,  but  against  the  system  whose  cumu 
lative  corruptions  and  enormities  Jefferson  Davis 
very  fairly  represents.  As  an  individual,  Jefferson 
Davis  is  not  worse  than  many  people  whom  a  general 
amnesty  would  preserve  in  their  persons  and  prop 
erty.  To  hang  him,  and  at  the  same  time  guarantee 
Slavery,  would  be  like  destroying  a  plant  by  a  vain 


182  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

attempt   to   kill   its   most  poisonous   blossom.      Our 
opposition  is  not  to  the  blossom,  but  to  the  root. 

We  admit  that  to  strike  at  the  root  is  a  very 
difficult  operation.  In  the  present  condition  of  the 
country  it  may  present  obstacles  which  will  practi 
cally  prove  insuperable.  But  it  is  plain  that  we  can 
strike  lower  than  the  blossom ;  and  it  is  also  plain 
that  we  must,  as  practical  men,  devise  some  method 
by  which  the  existence  of  the  Slavocracy  as  a  politi 
cal  power  may  be  annihilated.  The  President  of  the 
United  States  has  lately  recommended  that  Congress 
offer  the  co-operation  and  financial  aid  of  the  whole 
nation  in  a  peaceful  effort  to  abolish  Slavery,  —  with 
a  significant  hint,  that,  unless  the  loyal  Slave  States 
accept  the  proposition,  the  necessities  of  the  war  may 
dictate  severer  measures.  Emancipation  is  the  policy 
of  the  Government,  and  will  soon  be  the  determina 
tion  of  the  people.  Whether  it  shall  be  gradual  or 
immediate  depends  altogether  on  the  slaveholders 
themselves.  The  prolongation  of  the  war  for  a  year, 
and  the  operation  of  the  internal  tax  bill,  will  convert 
all  the  voters  of  the  Free  States,  whether  Republicans 
or  Democrats,  into  practical  Emancipationists.  The 
tax  bill  alone  will  teach  the  people  important  lessons 
which  no  politicians  can  gainsay.  Every  person  who 
buys  a  piece  of  broadcloth  or  calico, — every  person 
who  takes  a  cup  of  tea  or  coffee,  —  every  person  who 
lives  from  day  to  day  on  the  energy  he  thinks  he 
derives  from  patent  medicines,  or  beer,  or  whiskey, — 
every  person  who  signs  a  note,  or  draws  a  bill  of 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  183 

exchange,  or  sends  a  telegraphic  despatch,  or  adver 
tises  in  a  newspaper,  or  makes  a  will,  or  "  raises " 
anything,  or  manufactures  anything,  will  naturally 
inquire  why  he  or  she  is  compelled  to  submit  to  an 
irritating  as  well  as  an  onerous  tax.  The  only  an 
swer  that  can  possibly  be  returned  is  this,  —  that  all 
these  vexatious  burdens  are  necessary  because  a  com 
paratively  few  persons  out  of  an  immense  population 
have  chosen  to  get  up  a  civil  war  in  order  to  protect 
and  foster  their  slave-property,  and  the  political  power 
it  confers.  As  this  property  is  but  a  small  fraction 
of  the  whole  property  of  the  country,  and  as  its 
owners  are  not  a  hundredth  part  of  the  population 
of  the  country,  does  any  sane  man  doubt  that  the 
slave-property  will  be  relentlessly  confiscated  in  order 
that  the  Slave  Power  may  be  forever  crushed  ? 

There  are,  we  know,  persons  in  the  Free  States 
who  pretend  to  believe  that  the  war  will  leave  Slavery 
where  the  war  found  it,  that  our  half  a  million  of 
soldiers  have  gone  South  on  a  sort  of  military  picnic, 
and  will  return  in  a  cordial  mood  towards  their 
Southern  brethren  in  arms,  and  that  there  is  no 
real  depth  and  earnestness  of  purpose  in  the  Free 
States.  Though  one  year  has  done  the  ordinary 
work  of  a  century  in  effecting  or  confirming  changes 
in  the  ideas  and  sentiments  of  the  people,  these 
persons  still  sagely  rely  on  the  party-phrases  current 
some  eighteen  months  ago  to  reconstruct  the  Union 
on  the  old  basis  of  the  domination  of  the  Slave 
Power,  through  the  combination  of  a  divided  North 


184  SLAVERY,  IN  ITS  PRINCIPLES, 

with  a  united  South.  By  the  theory  of  these  persons, 
there  is  something  peculiarly  sacred  in  property  in 
men,  distinguishing  it  from  the  more  vulgar  form 
of  property  in  things ;  and  though  the  cost  of  putting 
down  the  Rebellion  will  nearly  equal  the  value  of 
the  Southern  slaves,  considered  as  chattels,  they 
suppose  that  the  owners  of  property  in  things  will 
cheerfully  submit  to  be  taxed  for  a  thousand  millions, 
—  a  fourth  of  the  almost  fabulous  debt  of  England, — 
without  any  irritation  against  the  chivalric  owners 
of  property  in  men,  whose  pride,  caprice,  and  insubor 
dination  have  made  the  taxation  necessary.  Such 
may  possibly  be  the  fact,  but  as  sane  men  we  cannot 
but  disbelieve  it.  Our  conviction  is,  that,  whether 
the  war  is  ended  in  three  months  or  in  twelve 
months,  the  Slave  Power  is  sure  to  be  undermined 
or  overthrown.  The  sooner  the  war  is  ended,  the 
more  favorable  will  be  the  terms  granted  to  the 
Slavocracy ;  but  no  terms  will  be  granted  which  do 
not  look  to  its  extinction.  The  slaveholders  are 
impelled  by  their  system  to  complete  victory  or  utter 
ruin.  If  they  obey  the  laws  of  their  system,  they 
have,  from  present  appearances,  nothing  but  defeat, 
beggary,  and  despair  to  expect.  If  they  violate  the 
laws  of  their  system,  they  must  take  their  place  in 
some  one  of  the  numerous  degrees,  orders,  and  ranks 
of  the  Abolitionists.  It  will  be  well  for  them,  if  the 
wilfulness  developed  by  their  miserable  system  gives 
way  to  the  plain  reason  and  logic  of  facts  and  events. 
It  will  be  well  for  them,  if  they  submit  to  a  necessity, 


DEVELOPMENT,  AND  EXPEDIENTS.  185 

not  only  inherent  in  the  inevitable  operation  of  divine 
laws,  but  propelled  by  half  a  million  of  men  in  arms. 
Be  it  that  God  is  on  the  side  of  the  heaviest  column, 
—  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  heaviest  column  is 
now  the  column  of  Freedom. 

May,  1862. 


THE  NEW  OPPOSITION  PARTY. 

IN  the  rapid  alternations  of  opinion  produced  by 
the  varying  incidents  of  the  present  war,  a  few  days 
effect  the  work  of  centuries.  We  may  therefore  be 
pardoned  for  giving  an  antique  coloring  to  an  event 
of  recent  occurrence.  Accordingly  we  say,  once  upon 
a  time  (Tuesday,  July  1, 1862)  a  great  popular  con 
vention  of  all  who  loved  the  Constitution  and  the 
Union,  and  all  who  hated  "  niggers,"  was  called  in 
the  city  of  New  York.  The  place  of  meeting  was  the 
Cooper  Institute,  and  among  the  signers  to  the  call 
were  prominent  business  and  professional  men  of  that 
great  metropolis.  At  this  meeting,  that  eminently 
calm  and  learned  jurist,  the  Honorable  W.  A.  Duer, 
interrupted  the  course  of  an  elaborate  argument  for 
the  constitutional  rights  of  the  Southern  rebels  by  a 
melodramatic  exclamation,  that,  if  we  hanged  the 
traitors  of  the  country  in  the  order  of  their  guilt, 
"  the  next  man  who  marched  upon  the  scaffold  after 
Jefferson  Davis  would  be  Charles  Sumner." 

The  professed  object  of  the  meeting  was  to  form  a 
party  devoted  to  the  support  of  "  the  Constitution  as 
it  is  and  the  Union  as  it  was."  Its  practical  effect 
was  to  give  the  Confederates  and  foreign  powers  a 


THE  NEW  OPPOSITION   PARTY.  187 

broad  hint  that  the  North  was  no  longer  a  unit.     The 
coincidence  of  the  meeting  with  the  Federal  reverses 
before  Richmond  made  its  professed  object  all  the 
more  ridiculous.     The  babbling  and  bawling  of  the 
speakers  about  "  the  rights  of  the  South,"  and  a  the 
infamous  Abolitionists  who  disgraced  Congress,"  were 
but  faint  echoes  of  the  Confederate  cannon  which  had 
just  ceased  to   carry  death   into   the   Union   ranks. 
Both   the  speeches  and   the  cannon   spoke   hostility 
to  the  National  Cause.      The  number  of  the  dead, 
wounded,  "  missing,"   and    demoralized   members   of 
the  great  Army  of  the  Potomac  exceeded,  on  that 
Tuesday  evening,  any  army  which  the  United  States 
had   ever,  before   the   present  war,  arrayed   on  any 
battle-field.     Jefferson   Davis,  on  that  evening,  was 
safer  at  Richmond   than   Abraham   Lincoln  was   at 
Washington.      A    well-grounded    apprehension,    not 
only  for  the  "Union,"  but  for  the   safety  of   loyal 
States,  was  felt  on  that  evening  all  over  the  North 
and  West.     It  was,  in  fact,  the  darkest  hour  in  the 
whole  annals  of  the  Republic.     Even  the  authorities 
at  Washington  feared  that  the  Army  of  the  Potomac 
was  destroyed.     This  was  exactly  the  time  for  the 
Honorable    Mr.   Wickliffe    and    the    Honorable    Mr. 
Brooks,   for    the    Honorable   W.   A.   Duer    and   the 
Honorable   Fernando  Wood,  to  delight  the  citizens 
of  New  York  with   their  peculiar  eloquence.     This 
was  the  appropriate  occasion   to   stand   up   for  the 
persecuted  and  down-trodden  South !     This  was  the 
grand  opportunity  to  assert  the  noble  principle,  that, 


188  THE  NEW  OPPOSITION   PARTY, 

by  the  Constitution,  every  traitor  had  the  right  to  be 
tried  by  a  jury  of  traitors !  This  was  the  time  to 
dishonor  all  the  New  England  dead !  This  was  the 
time  to  denounce  the  living  worthies  of  New  Eng 
land  !  Hang  Jeff.  Davis  ?  Oh,  yes  !  We  all  know 
that  he  is  secure  behind  his  triumphant  slayers  of  the 
real  defenders  of  the  Constitution  and  the  Union. 
Neither  hangman  nor  Major-General  can  get  near 
him.  But  Charles  Sumner  is  in  our  power.  We  can 
hang  him  easily.  He  has  not  two  or  four  hundred 
thousand  men  at  his  back.  He  travels  alone  and  un 
attended.  Do  we  want  a  constitutional  principle  for 
combining  the  two  men  in  one  act  of  treason  ?  Here 

O 

is  a  calm  jurist,  —  here,  gentlemen  of  the  party  of  the 
Constitution  and  the  Laws,  is  the  Honorable  W.  A. 
Duer.  What  does  he  say  ?  Simply  this  :  u  Hang 
Jeff.  Davis  and  Charles  Sumner."  Davis  we  cannot 
hang,  but  Sumner  we  can.  Let  us  take  one  half  of 
his  advice  ;  circumstances  prevent  us  from  availing 
ourselves  of  the  whole.  There  is,  to  be  sure,  no  pos 
sibility  of  hanging  Charles  Sumner  under  any  law 
known  to  us,  the  especial  champions  of  the  laws. 
But  what  then  ?  Don't  you  see  the  Honorable  W.  A. 
Duer  appeals,  in  this  especial  case,  to  "the  higher 
law  "  of  the  mob  ?  Don't  you  see  that  he  desires  to 
shield  Jeff.  Davis  by  weaving  around  his  august  per 
son  all  the  fine  cobwebs  of  the  Law,  while  he  pro 
poses  to  have  Sumner  hanged  on  "irregular"  princi 
ples,  unknown  to  the  jurisprudence  of  Marshall  and 
Kent? 


THE  NEW  OPPOSITION  PARTY.  189 

But  enough  for  the  New  York  meeting.  It  was  of 
no  importance,  except  as  indicating  the  existence,  and 
giving  a  blundering  expression  to  the  objects,  of  one 
of  the  most  malignant  and  unpatriotic  factions  which 
this  country  has  ever  seen.  The  faction  is  led  by  a 
few  cold-blooded  politicians  universally  known  as  the 
meanest  sycophants  of  the  South  and  the  most  impu 
dent  bullies  of  the  North ;  but  they  have  contrived  to 
array  on  their  side  a  considerable  number  of  honest 
and  well-meaning  dupes  by  a  dexterous  appeal  to 
conservative  prejudice  and  conservative  passion,  so 
that  hundreds  serve  their  ends  who  would  feel  con 
taminated  by  their  companionship.  Never  before  has 
Respectability  so  blandly  consented  to  become  the 
mere  instrument  and  tool  of  Rascality.  The  rogues 
trust  to  inaugurate  treason  and  anarchy  under  the 
pretence  of  being  the  special  champions  of  the  Con 
stitution  and  the  Laws.  Their  real  adherents  are 
culled  from  the  most  desperate  and  dishonest  por 
tions  of  our  population.  They  can  hardly  indite  a 
leading  article,  or  make  a  stump  speech,  without 
showing  their  proclivities  to  mob-law.  To  be  sure, 
if  a  known  traitor  is  informally  arrested,  they  rave 
about  the  violation  of  the  rights  of  the  citizen;  but 
they  think  Lynch-law  is  good  enough  for  "  Abolition 
ists."  If  a  General  is  assailed  as  being  over-prudent 
and  cautious  in  his  operations  against  the  common 
enemy,  they  immediately  laud  him  as  a  Hannibal,  a 
Cassar,  and  a  Napoleon ;  they  assume  to  be  his  special 
friends  and  admirers  ;  they  adjure  him  to  persevere  in 


190  THE  NEW  OPPOSITION   PARTY. 

what  they  conceive  to  be  his  policy  of  inaction  ;  and, 
as  he  is  a  great  master  in  strategy,  they  hint  that  his 
best  strategic  movement  would  be  a  movement,  a  la 
Cromwell,  on  the  Abolitionized  Congress  of  the  United 
States.  Disunion,  anarchy,  the  violation  of  all  law, 
the  appeal  to  the  lowest  and  fiercest  impulses  of  the 
most  ignorant  portions  of  the  Northern  people, — 
these  constitute  the  real  stock  in  trade  of  "  the  Hang- 
Jeff.-Davis-and-Charles-Sumner"  party;  but  the  thing 
is  so  managed,  that,  formally,  this  party  appears  as 
the  special  champion  of  the  Union,  the  Constitution, 
and  the  Laws. 

Those  politicians  who  personally  dislike  the  present 
holders  of  political  power,  those  politicians  who  think 
that  the  measures  of  confiscation  and  emancipation 
passed  by  the  Congress  which  has  just  adjourned  are 
both  unjust  and  impolitic,  unconsciously  slide  into 
the  aiders  and  abettors  of  the  knaves  they  individu 
ally  despise  and  distrust.  The  "  radicals"  must,  they 
say,  at  all  events,  be  checked ;  and  they  lazily  follow 
the  lead  of  the  rascals.  The  rascals  intend  to  ruin 
the  country  ;  but  then  they  propose  to  do  it  in  a 
constitutional  way.  The  only  thing,  it  seems,  that 
a  lawyer  and  a  jurist  can  consider  is  Form.  If  the 
country  is  dismembered,  if  all  its  defenders  are  slain, 
if  the  Southern  Confederacy  is  triumphant,  not  only 
at  Richmond,  but  at  Washington  and  New  York,  if 
eight  millions  of  people  beat  twenty  millions,  and  the 
greatest  of  all  democracies  ignominiously  succumbs 
to  the  basest  of  all  aristocracies,  the  true  patriots 


THE   NEW  OPPOSITION   PARTY.  191 

will  still  have  the  consolation,  that  the  defeat,  the 
"  damned  defeat,"  occurred  under  the  strictest  forms 
of  Law.    Better  that  ten  Massachusetts  soldiers  should 
be  killed  than  that  one  negro  should  be  illegally  freed  ! 
Better  that  Massachusetts  should  be  governed  by  Jeff. 
Davis  than  that  it  should  be  represented  by  such  men 
as   Charles   Simmer  and  Henry  Wilson,  notoriously 
hostile   to   the   constitutional   rights   of  the   South  ! 
Subjection,  in  itself,  is  bad ;  but  the  great  American 
idea  of  local  governments  for  local  purposes,  and  a 
general  government  for  general  purposes,  still,  thank 
God !  may  survive  it.     To  be  sure,  we  may  be  beaten 
and   enslaved.     The   rascals,  renegades,  and  liberti- 
cides  may  gain  their  object.      This  object  we  shall 
ever  contemn.     But  if  they  gain  it  fairly,  under  the 
forms  of  the  Constitution,  it  is  the  duty  of  all  good 
citizens    to    submit.      Our   Southern    opponents,   we 
acknowledge,  committed  some  "  irregularities ;  "  but 
nobody  can  assert,  that,  in    dealing  with  them,  we 
deviated,  by  a   hair's-breadth,  from   the   powers   in 
trusted  to  the  Government   by  the   Fathers   of  the 
Republic.     While  the  country  is  convulsed  by  a  re 
bellion   unprecedented   in   the  whole  history  of   the 
world,  we  are   compelled  by   our  principles  to  look 
upon  it  as  lawyers,  and  not  as  statesmen.     We  apply 
to  it  the  same  principles  which  our  venerated  fore 
fathers  applied  to  Shays' s  Rebellion  in  Massachusetts 
and  the  Whiskey  Insurrection  in  Pennsylvania.     To 
be  sure,  the  "circumstances"  are  different;  but  we 
need  not  remind  the  philanthropic  inhabitants  of  our 


192  THE  NEW  OPPOSITION  PARTY. 

section  of  the  country,  that  "  principles  are  eternal." 
We  judge  the  existing  case  by  these  eternal  princi 
ples.  We  may  fail,  and  fail  ignominiously ;  but,  in 
our  failure,  nobody  can  say  that  we  violated  any 
sacred  form  of  the  ever-glorious  Constitution  of  the 
United  States.  The  Constitution  has  in  it  no  pro 
visions  to  secure  its  own  existence  by  unconstitu 
tional  means.  It  is  therefore  our  duty,  as  lawyers 
as  well  as  legislators,  to  allow  the  gentlemen  who 
have  repudiated  it,  because  they  were  defeated  in  an 
election,  to  enjoy  all  its  benefits.  That  they  do  not 
seem  to  appreciate  these  benefits,  but  shoot,  in  a 
shockingly  "  irregular "  manner,  all  who  insist  on 
imposing  on  them  its  blessings,  furnishes  no  reason 
why  we  should  partake  in  their  guilt  by  violating  its 
provisions.  It  is  true  that  the  Government  estab 
lished  by  the  Constitution  may  fall  by  a  strict  ad 
herence  to  our  notions  of  the  Constitution ;  but  even 
in  that  event  we  shall  have  the  delicious  satisfaction 
of  contemplating  it  in  memory  as  a  beautiful  idea, 
after  it  has  ceased  to  exist  as  a  palpable  fact.  As 
the  best  constitution  ever  devised  by  human  wisdom, 
we  shall  always  find  a  more  exquisite  delight  in  medi 
tating  on  the  mental  image  of  its  perfect  features 
than  in  enjoying  the  practical  blessings  of  any  other 
Government  which  may  be  established  after  it  is 
dead  and  gone  ;  and  our  feeling  regarding  it  can  be 
best  expressed  in  the  words  in  which  the  lyric  poet 
celebrates  his  loyalty  to  the  soul  of  the  departed 
object  of  his  affection:  — 


THE  NEW  OPPOSITION   PARTY.  193 

"  Though  many  a  gifted  mind  we  meet, 

And  fairest  forms  we  see, 
To  live  with  them  is  far  less  sweet 
Than  to  remember  thee  ! " 

It  is  fortunate  both  for  our  safety  and  the  safety  of 
the  Constitution,  that  these  politico-sentimental  gen 
tlemen  represent  only  a  certain  theory  of  the  Consti 
tution,  and  not  the  Constitution  itself.  Their  leading 
defect  is  an  incapacity  to  adjust  their  profound  legal 
intellects  to  the  altered  circumstances  of  the  country. 
Any  child  in  political  knowledge  is  competent  to  give 
them  this  important  item  of  political  information,  — 
that  by  no  constitution  of  government  ever  devised  by 
human  morality  and  intelligence  were  the  rights  of 
rascals  so  secured  as  to  give  them  the  privilege  of 
trampling  on  the  rights  of  honest  men.  Any  child 
in  political  knowledge  is  competent  to  inform  them 
of  this  fundamental  fact,  underlying  all  laws  and 
constitutions,  —  that,  if  a  miscreant  attempts  to  cut 
your  throat,  you  may  resist  him  by  all  the  means 
which  your  strength  and  his  weakness  place  in  your 
power.  Any  child  in  political  knowledge  is  further 
competent  to  furnish  them  with  this  additional  bit  of 
wisdom,  —  that  every  constitution  of  government  pro 
vides,  under  the  war-power  it  confers,  against  its  own 
overthrow  by  rebels  and  by  enemies.  If  rebels  rise 
to  the  dignity  and  exert  the  power  of  enemies,  they 
can  be  proceeded  against  both  as  rebels  and  as  ene 
mies.  As  rebels,  the  Government  is  bound  to  give 
them  all  the  securities  which  the  Constitution  may 

13 


194  THE  NEW  OPPOSITION  PARTY. 

guarantee  to  traitors.  As  enemies,  the  Government 
is  restricted  only  by  the  vast  and  vague  "  rights  of 
war,"  of  which  its  own  military  necessities  must  be 
the  final  judge. 

"  But,"  say  the  serene  thinkers  and  scholars  whom 
the  rogues  use  as  mouthpieces,  "  our  object  is  simply 
to  defend  the  Constitution.  We  do  not  believe  that 
the  Government  has  any  of  the  so-called  4  rights  of 
war '  against  the  rebels.  If  Jefferson  Davis  has  com 
mitted  the  crime  of  treason,  he  has  the  same  right  to 
be  tried  by  a  jury  of  the  district  in  which  his  alleged 
crime  was  committed  that  a  murderer  has  to  be  tried 
by  a  similar  jury.  We  know  that  Mr.  Davis,  in  case 
the  rebellion  is  crushed,  will  not  only  be  triumphantly 
acquitted,  but  will  be  sent  to  Congress  as  Senator 
from  Mississippi.  This  is  mortifying  in  itself,  but  it 
still  is  a  beautiful  illustration  of  the  merits  of  our 
admirable  system  of  government.  It  enables  the 
South  to  play  successfully  the  transparent  game  of 
'  Heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose,'  and  so  far  must  be 
reckoned  bad.  But  this  evil  is  counterbalanced  by 
so  many  blessings,  that  nobody  but  a  miserable  Aboli 
tionist  will  think  of  objecting  to  the  arrangement. 
We,  on  the  whole,  agree  with  the  traitors,  whose 
designs  we  lazily  aid,  in  thinking  that  Jeff.  Davis  and 
Charles  Sumner  are  equally  guilty,  in  a  fair  estimate 
of  the  causes  of  our  present  misfortunes.  Hang  both, 
we  say ;  and  we  say  it  with  an  inward  confidence  that 
neither  will  be  hanged,  if  the  true  principles  of  the 
Constitution  be  carried  out." 


THE  NEW  OPPOSITION  PARTY.  195 

The  political  rogues  and  the  class  of  honest  men 
we  have  referred  to  are,  therefore,  practically  asso 
ciated  in  one  party  to  oppose  the  present  Government. 
The  rogues  lead  ;  the  honest  men  follow.  If  this  new 
party  succeeds,  we  shall  have  the  worst  party  in  power 
that  the  country  has  ever  known.  Buchanan  as  Presi 
dent,  and  Floyd  as  Secretary  of  War,  were  bad  enough. 
But  Buchanan  and  Floyd  had  no  large  army  to  com 
mand,  no  immense  material  of  war  to  direct.  As  far 
as  they  could,  they  worked  mischief,  and  mischief 
only.  But  their  means  were  limited.  The  Adminis 
tration  which  will  succeed  that  of  Abraham  Lincoln 
will  have  under  its  control  one  of  the  largest  and 
ablest  armies  and  navies  in  the  world.  Every  gen 
eral  and  every  admiral  will  be  compelled  to  obey  the 
orders  of  the  Administration.  If  the  Administration 
be  in  the  hands  of  secret  traitors,  the  immense  mili 
tary  and  naval  power  of  the  country  will  be  used  for 
its  own  destruction.  A  compromise  will  be  patched 
up  with  the  Rebel  States.  The  leaders  of  the  rebel 
lion  will  be  invited  back  to  their  old  seats  of  power. 
A  united  South  combined  with  a  Pro-slavery  faction 
in  the  North  will  rule  the  nation.  And  all  this  enor 
mous  evil  will  be  caused  by  the  simplicity  of  honest 
men  in  falling  into  the  trap  set  for  them  by  traitors 
and  rogues. 

September,  1862. 


THE  CAUSES   OF  FOREIGN  ENMITY  TO  THE 
UNITED   STATES. 

THE  hostility  of  foreign  governments  to  the  United 
States  is  due  as  much  at  least  to  dread  of  their 
growing  power  as  dislike  of  their  democracy  ;  and 
accordingly  the  theory  of  the  Secessionists  as  to  the 
character  of  our  Union  has  been  as  acceptable  to  the 
understandings  of  our  foreign  enemies  as  the  acts  of 
the  Rebels  against  its  government  have  been  pleasing 
to  their  sympathies.  They  well  know  that  a  union 
of  States  whose  government  recognized  the  right  of 
Secession  would  be  as  weak  as  an  ordinary  league 
between  independent  sovereignties ;  and  as  the  rapid 
growth  of  the  States  in  population,  wealth,  and  power 
is  certain,  they  naturally  desire  that,  if  united,  these 
States  shall  be  an  aggregation  of  forces  neutralizing 
each  other,  rather  than  a  fusion  of  forces  which,  for 
general  purposes,  would  make  them  a  giant  nation 
ality.  Accordingly,  centralized  France  reads  to  us 
edifying  homilies  on  the  advantages  of  disintegration  ; 
and  England,  rich  with  the  spoils  of  suppressed  insur 
rections,  adjures  us  most  plaintively  to  respect  the 
sacred  rights  of  rebellion.  The  simple  explanation 
of  this  hypocrisy  or  irony  is,  that  both  France  and 


THE  CAUSES  OF  FOREIGN  ENMITY.  197 

England  are  anxious  that  the  strength  of  the  United 
States  shall  not  correspond  to  their  bulk.  The  looser 
the  tie  of  union,  the  greater  the  number  of  confedera 
cies  into  which  the  nation  should  split,  the  safer  they 
would  feel.  The  doctrine  of  the  inherent  and  undi 
vided  sovereignty  of  the  States  will  therefore  find 
resolute  champions  abroad  as  long  as  it  has  the  most 
inconsiderable  faction  to  support  it  at  home. 

The  European  nations  are  kept  in  order  by  what  is 
called  the  Balance  of  Power,  and  this  policy  they 
would  delight  to  see  established  on  this  continent. 
Should  the  different  States  of  the  American  Union  be 
occupied,  like  the  European  States,  in  checking  each 
other,  they  could  not  act  as  a  unit,  and  their  terrific 
rate  of  growth  in  wealth  and  population,  as  compared 
with  that  of  the  nations  across  the  Atlantic,  would 
not  excite  in  the  latter  such  irritation  and  alarm. 
The  magic  which  has  changed  English  abolitionists 
into  partisans  of  slaveholders,  and  French  imperialists 
into  champions  of  insurrection,  came  from  the  figures 
of  the  Census  Reports.  It  is  calculated  that  the 
United  States,  if  the  rate  of  growth  which  obtained 
between  1850  and  1860  is  continued,  will  have,  forty 
years  hence,  a  hundred  millions  of  inhabitants,  and 
four  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  millions  of  dollars 
of  taxable  wealth,  —  over  three  times  the  present  pop 
ulation,  and  over  ten  times  the  present  wealth,  of  the 
richest  of  European  nations.  It  is  probable  that  this 
concrete  fact  exerts  more  influence  on  the  long-headed 
statesmen  of  Europe  than  any  abstract  dislike  of  de- 


198  THE  CAUSES  OE  EOREIGN  ENMITY 

mocracy.  The  only  union  which  they  could  bring 
against  such  a  power  would  be  a  league,  a  confed 
eracy,  a  continuous  and  subsisting  treaty,  between 
sovereign  powers.  Is  it  surprising  that  they  should 
wish  our  union  to  be  of  the  same  character  ?  Is  it 
surprising  that  the  contemplation  of  a  government, 
whether  despotic  or  democratic,  which  could  act  di 
rectly  on  a  hundred  millions  of  people,  with  the 
supreme  right  of  taxing  property  to  the  amount  of 
four  hundred  and  twenty  billions  of  dollars,  should 
fill  them  with  dismay  ? 

The  inherent  weakness  of  a  league,  even  when  its 
general  object  is  such  as  to  influence  the  passions  of 
the  nations  which  compose  it,  is  well  known  to  all 
European  statesmen.  The  various  alliances  against 
France  show  the  insuperable  difficulties  in  the  way  of 
giving  to  confederacies  of  sovereign  States  a  unity  and 
efficiency  corresponding  to  their  aggregate  strength, 
and  the  necessity  which  the  leaders  of  such  alliances 
are  always  under  of  expending  half  their  skill  and 
energy  in  preventing  the  loosely  compacted  league 
from  falling  to  pieces.  The  alliance  under  the  lead 
of  William  III.  barely  sustained  itself  against  Louis 
XIV.,  though  William  was  the  ablest  statesman  in 
Europe,  and  had  been  trained  in  the  tactics  of  confed 
eracies  from  his  cradle.  The  alliance  under  the  lead 
of  Marlborough  owed  its  measure  of  success  to  his 
infinite  address  and  miraculous  patience  as  much  as 
to  his  consummate  military  genius  ;  and  the  igno 
minious  "  secession "  of  England,  in  the  treaty  of 


TO  THE  UNITED   STATES.  199 

Utrecht,  ended  in  making  it  one  of  the  most  conspicu 
ous  examples  of  the  weakness  of  such  combinations. 
When  the  exceptional  military  genius,  as  in  the  case 
of  Frederick  and  Napoleon,  has  been  on  the  side  of 
the  single  power  assailed,  the  results  have  been  all  the 
more  remarkable.  The  coalition  against  Frederick, 
the  ruler  of  five  millions  of  people,  was  composed  of 
sovereigns  who  ruled  a  hundred  millions ;  and  at  the 
end  of  seven  years  of  war  they  had  not  succeeded  in 
wringing  permanently  from  his  grasp  a  square  mile 
of  territory.  The  first  coalitions  against  Napoleon 
resulted  only  in  making  him  the  master  of  Europe ; 
and  he  was  crushed  at  last  merely  by  the  dead  weight 
of  the  nations  which  the  senselessness  of  his  political 
passions  brought  down  upon  his  empire.  Indeed,  the 
trouble  with  all  leagues  is,  that  they  are  commanded, 
more  or  less,  by  debating  societies ;  and  a  debating 
society  is  weak  before  a  man.  The  Southern  Confed 
eracy  is  a  confederacy  only  in  name  :  for  no  despotism 
in  Europe  or  Asia  has  more  relentless  unity  of  pur 
pose,  and  in  none  does  debate  exercise  less  control 
over  executive  affairs.  All  the  powers  of  the  govern 
ment  are  practically  absorbed  in  Jefferson  Davis,  and 
a  rebellion  in  the  name  of  State  Rights  has  ended  in 
a  military  autocracy,  in  which  all  rights,  personal  and 
State,  are  suspended. 

Now,  as  it  is  impossible  for  European  governments 
to  combine  efficiently  against  such  a  colossal  power 
as  the  United  States  promise  within  a  few  genera 
tions  to  be,  provided  the  unity  of  the  nation  is  pre- 


200  THE  CAUSES  OF  FOREIGN  ENMITY 

served  with  its  growth,  they  naturally  favor  every 
element  of  disintegration  which  will  reduce  the  sepa 
rate  States  to  the  condition  of  European  States.  Earl 
Russell's  famous  saying,  that  "  the  North  is  fighting 
for  power,  the  South  for  independence,"  is  to  be 
interpreted  in  this  sense.  What  he  overlooked  was 
the  striking  fact  which  distinguishes  the  States  of  the 
American  Republic  from  the  States  of  Europe.  The 
latter  are  generally  separated  by  race  and  nationality, 
or,  where  composed  of  heterogeneous  materials,  are 
held  together  by  military  power.  The  people  of  the 
United  States  are  homogeneous,  and  rapidly  assimi 
late  into  American  citizens  the  foreigners  they  so 
cordially  welcome.  No  man  has  lifted  his  hand 
against  the  government  as  an  Irishman,  a  French 
man,  a  German,  an  Italian,  a  Dane,  but  only  as  a 
slaveholder,  or  as  a  citizen  of  a  State  controlled  by 
slaveholders.  The  insurrection  was  started  in  the 
interest  of  an  institution,  and  not  of  a  race.  To 
compare  such  a  rebellion  with  European  rebellions  is 
to  confuse  things  essentially  distinct.  The  American 
government  is  so  constituted  that  nobody  has  an 
interest  in  overturning  it,  unless  his  interest  is  op 
posed  to  that  of  the  mass  of  the  citizens  with  whom 
he  is  placed  on  an  equality ;  and  hence  his  treason 
is  necessarily  a  revolt  against  the  principle  of  equal 
rights.  In  Europe,  it  is  needless  to  say,  every  re 
bellion  with  which  an  American  can  sympathize  is  a 
rebellion  in  favor  of  the  principle  against  which  the 
slaveholders'  rebellion  is  an  armed  protest.  An  in- 


TO  THE  UNITED  STATES.  201 

surrection  in  Russia  to  restore  serfdom,  an  insurrec 
tion  in  Italy  to  restore  the  dethroned  despots,  an 
insurrection  in  England  to  restore  the  Stuart  system 
of  kingly  government,  an  insurrection  anywhere  to 
restore  what  the  progress  of  civilization  had  made 
contemptible  or  accursed,  would  be  the  only  fit  par 
allel  to  the  insurrection  of  the  Southern  Confederates. 
The  North  is  fighting  for  power  which  is  its  due, 
because  it  is  just  and  right;  the  South  is  fighting 
for  independence,  in  order  to  remove  all  checks  on 
its  purpose  to  oppress  and  enslave.  The  fact  that  the 
power  for  which  the  North  fights  is  a  very  different 
thing  from  the  power  which  a  European  monarchy 
struggles  to  preserve  and  extend,  the  fact  that  it  is 
the  kind  of  power  which  oppressed  nationalities  seek 
in  their  efforts  for  independence,  only  makes  our 
foreign  critics  more  apprehensive  of  its  effects.  It 
is  a  dangerous  power  to  them,  because,  founded  in 
the  consent  of  the  people,  there  is  no  limit  to  its 
possible  extension,  except  in  the  madness  or  guilt  of 
that  portion  of  the  people  who  are  restive  under  the 
restraints  of  justice  and  impatient  under  the  rule  of 
freedom. 

It  would  be  doing  cruel  wrong  to  Earl  Russell's 
intelligence  to  suppose  that  he  really  believed  what 
he  said,  when  he  drew  a  parallel  between  the  Amer 
ican  Revolution  and  the  Rebellion  of  the  Confederate 
States,  and  asserted  that  the  right  of  the  Southern 
States  to  secede  from  the  American  Union  was  iden 
tical  with  the  right  of  the  Colonies  to  sever  their 


202  THE   CAUSES   OF  FOREIGN  ENMITY 

connection  with  Great  Britain.  We  believe  the  Col 
onies  were  right  in  their  revolt.  But  if  the  circum 
stances  had  been  different, —  if  since  the  reign  of 
William  III.  they  had  nominated  or  controlled  almost 
every  Prime  Minister,  had  shaped  the  policy  of  the 
British  Empire,  had  enjoyed  not  only  a  representation 
in  Parliament,  but  in  the  basis  of  representation  had 
been  favored  with  a  special  discrimination  in  their 
favor  against  Kent  and  Yorkshire, —  if  both  in  the 
House  of  Lords  and  the  House  of  Commons  they 
had  not  only  been  dominant,  but  had  treated  the 
Bentincks,  Cavendishes,  and  Russells,  the  Montagus, 
Walpoles,  and  Pitts,  with  overbearing  insolence, — 
and  if,  after  wielding  power  so  long  and  so  arro 
gantly,  they  had  rebelled  at  the  first  turn  in  political 
affairs  which  seemed  to  indicate  that  they  were  to 
be  reduced  from  a  position  of  superiority  to  one  of 
equality,  —  if  our  forefathers  had  acted  after  this 
wild  fashion,  we  should  not  only  think  that  the 
Revolution  they  achieved  was  altogether  unjustifia 
ble,  but  we  should  blush  at  the  thought  of  being 
descended  from  such  despot-demagogues.  This  is 
a  very  feeble  statement  of  the  case  which  would 
connect  the  Revolt  of  the  American  Colonies  with 
the  Revolt  of  the  American  Liberticides ;  and  Earl 
Russell  is  too  well-informed  a  statesman  not  to  know 
that  his  parallel  fails  in  every  essential  particular. 
He  threw  it  out,  as  he  threw  out  his  sounding  an 
tithesis  about  "  power "  and  "independence,"  to  catch 
ears  not  specially  blessed  with  brains  between  them. 


TO  THE  UNITED   STATES.  203 

But  European  statesmen,  in  order  to  promote  the 
causes  of  American  dissensions,  are  willing  not  only 
to  hazard  fallacies  which  do  not  impose  on  their  own 
understandings,  but  to  give  aid  and  comfort  to  in 
iquities  which  in  Europe  have  long  been  antiquated. 
They  thus  tolerate  chattel  slavery,  not  because  they 
sympathize  with  it,  but  because  it  is  an  element 
of  disturbance  in  the  growth  of  American  pWer. 
Though  it  has  for  centuries  been  outgrown  by  the 
nations  of  Western  Europe,  and  is  repugnant  to  all 
their  ideas  and  sentiments,  they  are  willing  to  give 
it  their  moral  support,  provided  it  will  break  up  the 
union  of  the  people  of  the  States,  or  remain  as  a 
constantly  operating  cause  of  enmity  between  the 
sections  of  a  reconstructed  Union.  They  would  tol 
erate  Mormouism  or  Atheism  or  Diabolism,  if  they 
thought  it  would  have  a  similar  effect ;  but  at  the 
same  time  they  would  not  themselves  legalize  polyg 
amy,  or  deny  the  existence  of  God,  or  inaugurate 
the  worship  of  the  Devil.  Indeed,  while  giving  slav 
ery  a  politic  sanction,  they  despise  in  their  hearts 
the  people  who  are  so  barbarous  as  to  maintain  such 
an  institution;  and  the  Southern  rebel  or  Northern 
demagogue  who  thinks  his  championship  of  slavery 
really  earns  him  any  European  respect  is  under  that 
kind  of  delusion  which  it  is  always  for  the  interest 
of  the  plotter  to  cultivate  in  the  tool.  It  was  com 
mon,  a  few  years  ago,  to  represent  the  Abolitionist 
as  the  dupe  or  agent  of  the  aristocracies  of  Europe. 
It  certainly  might  be  supposed  that  persons  who 


204  THE  CAUSES  OF  FOREIGN  ENMITY 

made  this  foolish  charge  were  competent  at  least  to 
see  that  the  present  enemy  of  the  unity  of  the  Amer 
ican  people  is  the  Pro-slavery  fanatic,  and  that  it  is 
on  his  knavery  or  stupidity  that  the  ill-wishers  to 
American  unity  now  chiefly  rely. 

For  the  war  has  compelled  these  ill-wishers  to 
modify  their  most  cherished  theory  of  democracy  in 
the  United  States.  They  thought  that  the  marvel 
lous  energy  for  military  combination,  developed  hy  a 
democracy  suddenly  emancipated  from  oppression, 
such  as  was  presented  by  the  French  people  in  the 
Revolution  of  1789,  was  not  the  characteristic  of  a 
democracy  which  had  grown  up  under  democratic  in 
stitutions.  The  first  was  anarchy  plus  the  dictator; 
the  second  was  merely  "  anarchy  plus  the  constable." 
They  had  an  obstinate  prepossession,  that,  in  a  set 
tled  democracy  like  ours,  the  selfishness  of  the  indi 
vidual  was  so  stimulated  that  he  became  incapable 
of  self-sacrifice  for  the  public  good.  The  ease  with 
which  the  government  of  the  United  States  has  raised 
men  by  the  million  and  money  by  the  billion  has 
overturned  this  theory,  and  shown  that  a  republic,  of 
which  individual  liberty  and  general  equality  form  the 
animating  principles,  can  still  rapidly  avail  itself  of 
the  property  and  personal  service  of  all  the  individ 
uals  who  compose  it,  and  that  self-seeking  is  not 
more  characteristic  of  a  democracy  in  time  of  peace 
than  self-sacrifice  is  characteristic  of  the  same  de 
mocracy  in  time  of  war.  The  overwhelming  and 
apparently  unlimited  power  of  a  government  thus  of 


TO  THE  UNITED  STATES.  205 

the  people  and  for  the  people  is  what  the  war  has  de 
monstrated,  and  it  very  naturally  excites  the  fear  and 
jealousy  of  governments  which  are  based  on  less  firm 
foundations  in  the  popular  mind  and  heart  and  will. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  many  candid  foreign 
thinkers  favor  the  disintegration  of  the  American 
Union  because  they  believe  that  the  consolidation  of 
its  power  would  make  it  the  meddlesome  tyrant  of 
the  world.  They  admit  that  the  enterprise,  skill,  and 
labor  of  the  people,  applied  to  the  unbounded  unde 
veloped  resources  of  the  country,  will  enable  them  to 
create  wealth  very  much  faster  than  other  nations, 
and  that  the  population,  fed  by  continual  streams  of 
immigration,  will  also  increase  with  a  corresponding 
rapidity.  They  admit  that,  if  kept  united,  a  few  gen 
erations  will  be  sufficient  to  make  them  the  richest, 
largest,  and  most  powerful  nation  in  the  world.  But 
they  also  fear  that  this  nation  will  be  an  armed  and 
aggressive  democracy,  deficient  in  public  reason  and 
public  conscience,  disposed  to  push  unjust  claims  with 
insolent  pertinacity,  and  impelled  by  a  spirit  of  propa- 
gandism  which  will  continually  disturb  the  peace  of 
Europe.  It  is  curious  that  this  impression  is  derived 
from  the  actions  of  the  government  while  it  was  con 
trolled  by  the  traitors  now  in  rebellion  against  it,  and 
from  the  professions  of  those  Northern  demagogues 
who  are  most  in  sympathy  with  European  opinion 
concerning  the  justice  and  policy  of  the  war.  Mr. 
Fernando  Wood,  the  most  resolute  of  all  the  North 
ern  advocates  of  peace,  recommended  from  his  seat 


206  THE  CAUSES  OE  FOREIGN  ENMITY. 

in  Congress  but  a  month  ago,  that  a  compromise  be 
patched  up  with  the  Rebels  011  the  principle  of  sac 
rificing  the  negro,  and  then  that  both  sections  unite 
to  seize  Canada,  Cuba,  and  Mexico.  The  kind  of 
"  democracy "  which  Mr.  Jefferson  Davis  and  Mr. 
Fernando  Wood  represent  is  the  kind  of  democracy 
which  has  always  been  the  great  disturber  of  our  for 
eign  relations,  and  it  is  a  democracy  which  will  be 
rendered  powerless  by  the  triumph  of  the  national 
arms.  The  United  States  of  1900,  with  their  popula 
tion  of  a  hundred  millions,  and  their  wealth  of  four 
hundred  and  twenty  billions,  will,  we  believe,  be  a 
power  for  good,  and  not  for  evil.  They  will  be  strong 
enough  to  make  their  rights  respected  everywhere  ; 
but  they  will  not  force  their  ideas  on  other  nations 
at  the  point  of  the  bayonet ;  they  will  not  waste  their 
energies  in  playing  the  part  of  the  armed  propagand 
ist  of  democratic  opinions  in  Europe  ;  and  the  con 
tagion  of  their  principles  will  only  be  the  natural 
result  of  the  example  of  peace,  prosperity,  freedom, 
and  justice,  which  they  will  present  to  the  world. 
In  Europe,  where  power  commonly  exists  only  to  be 
abused,  this  statement  would  be  received  with  an  in 
credulous  smile ;  but  we  have  no  reason  to  doubt 
that,  among  the  earnest  patriots  who  are  urging  on 
the  present  war  for  Liberty  and  Union  to  a  victorious 
conclusion,  it  would  be  considered  the  most  common 
place  of  truths. 

March,  1865. 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND    NEGRO    SUFFRAGE. 

THE  submission  of  the  Rebel  armies  and  the  occu 
pation  of  the  Rebel  territory  by  the  forces  of  the 
United  States  are  successes  which  have  been  pur 
chased  at  the  cost  of  the  lives  of  half  a  million  of 
loyal  men  and  a  debt  of  nearly  three  thousand  mill 
ions  of  dollars ;  but,  according  to  theories  of  State 
Rights  now  springing  anew  to  life,  victory  has  smitten 
us  with  impotence.  The  war,  it  seems,  was  waged  for 
the  purpose  of  forcing  the  sword  out  of  the  Rebels' 
hands,  and  forcing  into  them  the  ballot.  At  an  enor 
mous  waste  of  treasure  and  blood  we  have  acquired 
the  territory  for  which  we  fought ;  and  lo !  it  is  not 
ours,  but  belongs  to  the  people  we  have  been  engaged 
in  fighting,  in  virtue  of  the  Constitution  we  have  been 
fighting  for.  The  Federal  Government  is  now,  it 
appears,  what  Wigfall  elegantly  styled  it  four  years 
ago,  —  nothing  but  "  the  one-horse  concern  at  Wash 
ington  : "  the  real  power  is  in  the  States  it  has  sub 
dued.  We  are  therefore  expected  to  act  like  the 
savage,  who,  after  thrashing  his  Fetich  for  disap 
pointing  his  prayers,  falls  down  again  and  worships 
it.  Our  Fetich  is  State  Rights,  as  perversely  misun 
derstood.  The  Rebellion  would  have  been  soon  put 
down,  had  it  been  merely  an  insurrectionary  outbreak 


208     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

of  masses  of  people  without  any  political  organization. 
Its  tremendous  force  came  from  its  being  a  revolt  of 
States,  with  the  capacity  to  employ  those  powers  of 
taxation  and  conscription  which  place  the  persons 
and  property  of  all  residing  in  political  communities 
at  the  service  of  their  governments.  And  now  that 
characteristic  which  gave  strength  to  the  Rebel  com 
munities  in  war  is  invoked  to  shield  them  from 
Federal  regulation  in  defeat.  We  are  required  to 
substitute  technicalities  for  facts ;  to  consider  the 
Rebellion  —  what  it  notoriously  was  not  —  a  mere 
revolt  of  loose  aggregations  of  men  owing  allegiance 
to  the  United  States ;  and  to  hold  the  States,  which 
endowed  them  with  such  a  perfect  organization  and 
poisonous  vitality,  as  innocent  of  the  crime.  The 
verbal  dilemma  in  which  this  reasoning  places  us  is 
this :  that  the  Rebel  States  could  not  do  what  they  did, 
and  therefore  we  cannot  do  what  we  must.  Among 
other  things  which  it  is  said  we  cannot  do,  the  pre 
scribing  of  the  qualifications  of  voters  in  the  States 
occupies  the  most  important  place ;  and  it  is  necessary 
to  inquire  whether  the  Rebel  communities  now  held 
by  our  military  power  are  States,  in  the  sense  that 
word  bears  in  the  Federal  Constitution.  If  they  are, 
we  have  not  only  no  right  to  say  that  negroes  shall 
enjoy  in  them  the  privilege  of  voting,  but  no  right  to 
prescribe  any  qualifications  for  white  voters. 

In  the  American  system,  the  process  by  which  con 
stitutions  are  made  and  governments  instituted  is  by 
conventions  of  the  people.  The  State  constitutions 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE.      209 

were  ordained  by  conventions  of  the  people  of  the 
several  States;  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
was  made  the  supreme  law  of  the  land  by  conventions 
of  the  people  of  all  the  States ;  and  the  only  method 
by  which  a  State  could  be  released,  with  any  show  of 
legality,  from  its  obligations  to  the  United  States, 
would  be  the  assent  of  the  same  power  which  created 
the   Federal   Constitution,— namely,  conventions  of 
the  people  of  all  the  States.     The  course  adopted  by 
the  so-called  "seceding"  States  was  separate  State 
action  by  popular  conventions  in  the  States  seceding. 
This  was  an   appeal  to  the  original  authority  from 
which  State  governments  and  constitutions  derived 
their  powers,  but  a  violation  of  solemn  faith  towards 
the  Government  and  Constitution  decreed  by  the  peo 
ple  of  all  the  States,  and  which,  by  the  assent  of  each 
State,  formed  a  vital  part  of  each  State  constitution. 
No  State  convention  could  be  called  for  the  purpose 
of  separating  from  the  Union,  — of  destroying  what 
the  officers  calling  it  had  sworn  to  support,  —  without 
making  official  perjury  the  preliminary  condition  of 
State  sovereignty.     Looked  at  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  State  seceding,  the  act  was  an  assertion  of 
State  independence  ;  looked  at  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States,  it  was  an  act 
of  State  suicide.     The  State  so  acting  through  a  con 
vention  of  its  people  was  no  longer  a  State,  in  the 
meaning  that  word  bears  in  the  Federal  Constitution  ; 
for  whatever  it  may  have  been  before  it  was  one  of 
the  United  States,  it  was  transformed  into  a  different 

14 


210     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

political  society  by  making  the  Federal  Constitution  a 
part  of  its  own  organic  law.  In  cutting  that  bond,  it 
bled  to  death  as  a  State,  as  far  as  the  Federal  Consti 
tution  knows  a  State,  to  rise  again  as  a  Rebel  com 
munity,  holding  a  portion  of  the  Federal  territory  by 
force  of  arms.  A  State,  in  the  meaning  of  the  Fed 
eral  Constitution,  is  a  political  community  forbidden 
to  exercise  sovereign  powers,  and  at  once  a  part  of 
the  Federal  Government  and  owing  allegiance  to  it. 
Is  South  Carolina,  which  has  exercised  sovereign 
powers,  which  has  broken  its  allegiance  to  the  Fed 
eral  Government,  and  which  at  present  is  certainly 
not  a  part  of  it,  such  a  political  society  ? 

It  is,  we  know,  contended  by  some  reasoners  on  the 
subject,  that  the  Rebel  States  could  not  do  what  they 
palpably  did.  This  course  of  argument  is  sustained 
only  by  confounding  duties  with  powers.  By  the  Con 
stitution  a  State  cannot  (that  is,  has  no  right  to)  se 
cede,  only  as,  by  the  moral  law,  a  man  cannot  (that  is, 
has  no  right  to)  commit  murder ;  nevertheless,  States 
have  broken  away  from  their  obligations  to  the  Union, 
as  murderers  have  broken  away  from  their  obligations 
to  the  moral  law.  It  is  folly  to  claim  that  criminal 
acts  are  impossible  because  they  are  unjustifiable. 
The  real  question  relates  to  the  condition  in  which 
the  criminal  acts  of  the  Rebel  States  lefi^  them  as 
political  societies.  They  cannot  claim,  as  some  of 
their  Northern  champions  do  for  them,  that,  being 
in  the  Union  in  our  view,  and  out  of  it  in  their  own, 
the  only  result  of  defeating  them  as  Rebels  is  to 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE.      211 

restore  them  as  citizens.  This  would  be  playing  a 
political  game  of  "  Heads  I  win,  tails  you  lose,"  which 
they  must  know  can  hardly  succeed  with  a  nation 
which  has  made  such  enormous  sacrifices  of  treasure 
and  blood  in  putting  them  down.  After  having,  by  a 
solemn  act  of  their  own,  through  conventions  of  the 
people,  forsworn  their  duties  to  the  Constitution,  they 
by  that  act  forfeited  its  privileges.  In  our  view  they 
became  Rebel  enemies,  against  whom  we  had  both  the 
rights  of  sovereignty  and  the  rights  of  war ;  in  their 
own  view,  they  became  foreigners ;  and  from  that 
moment  they  had  no  more  "  constitutional "  control  of 
the  area  they  occupied,  were  no  more  "  States,"  than 
if  they  had  transferred  their  allegiance  to  a  European 
power,  and  the  war  had  been  prosecuted  to  wrest  the 
territory  they  occupied,  and  the  people  they  ruled, 
from  the  clutch  of  England  or  France.  Even  if  we 
consider  the  Union  a  mere  partnership  of  States,  the 
same  principle  will  apply;  for  partnership  implies 
mutual  obligations,  and  no  partner  can  steal  the  prop 
erty  of  his  firm,  and  abscond  with  it,  and  then,  after  he 
has  been  hunted  down  and  arrested,  claim  the  rights 
in  the  business  he  enjoyed  before  he  turned  rogue. 

But  it  is  sometimes  asserted  that  the  small  minor 
ity  of  citizens  in  the  Rebel  States  claiming  to  be,  and 
to  have  been,  loyal,  constitute  the  States  in  the  con 
stitutional  meaning  of  the  term.  Now,  without  in 
sisting  on  the  fact  that  it  is  so  plainly  impossible  accu 
rately  to  distinguish  these  from  the  disloyal,  that  an 
oath,  not  required  by  State  constitutions,  has,  in  the 


212     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO   SUFFRAGE. 

recent  attempt  at  reconstruction,  been  imposed  by 
Federal  authority  on  all  voters  alike,  it  is  plain  that 
no  minority  in  a  political  society  can  claim  exemption 
from  political  evils  it  had  not  power  to  prevent.  Had 
we  gone  to  war  with  Great  Britain,  the  property  of 
Cobden  and  Bright  on  the  high  seas  would  have  been 
as  liable  to  capture  as  that  of  Lindsay  or  Laird.  No 
loyal  citizens  at  the  South  could  have  been  more 
bitterly  opposed  to  Secession  than  some  of  our  North 
ern  Copperheads  were  to  the  war  for  the  Union ;  and 
yet  the  persons  of  the  Copperheads  were  as  liable  to 
conscription,  and  their  property  to  taxation,  as  those 
of  the  most  enthusiastic  Eepublicans.  There  would 
be  an  end  to  political  societies,  if  men  should  refuse 
to  be  held  responsible  for  all  public  acts  except  those 
they  personally  approved.  A  member  of  a  community 
whose  people,  in  a  convention,  broke  faith  with  the 
United  States,  and  made  war  against  it,  the  Southern 
Unionist  was  forced  into  complicity  with  the  crime. 
By  the  pressure  of  a  power  he  could  not  resist  he  was 
compelled  to  pay  Confederate  taxes,  serve  in  Confed 
erate  armies,  and  become  a  portion  of  the  Confederate 
strength.  More  than  this :  the  property  in  human 
beings,  which  he  held  by  local  law,  was  confiscated 
by  the  Federal  Government's  edict  of  emancipation, 
equally  with  the  same  kind  of  property  held  by  the 
most  disloyal.  And  now  that  the  war  is  over,  he  and 
those  who  sympathized  with  him  are  not  the  State, 
which  was  extinguished  by  its  own  act  when  it  re 
belled.  He  and  his  friends  may  be  the  objects  of 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE.      213 

sympathy,  of  honor,  of  reward;  but  in  the  work  of 
reconstruction  the  interest  and  safety  of  the  great 
body  of  loyal  citizens  of  the  United  States,  of  the 
persons  who  have  bought  the  territory  at  such  a  ter 
rible  price,  are  to  be  primarily  consulted.  And  not 
simply  because  such  a  course  is  expedient,  but  because 
the  Southern  Unionists  can  advance  no  valid  claim  to 
be  the  political  societies  which  were  recognized  by  the 
Federal  Constitution  as  States  before  the  Rebellion. 
If  they  were,  they  might  proceed  at  once  to  assume 
the  powers  of  the  States,  without  any  authority  from 
Washington,  and  without  calling  any  convention  to 
form  a  new  constitution.  If,  on  the  breaking  out  of 
the  Rebellion,  they  had  rallied  in  defence  of  the  old 
constitutions  within  State  limits,  preserved  the  organi 
zation  of  the  States  in  all  departments,  raised  and 
equipped  armies,  and  conducted  a  war  against  the 
Confederates  as  traitors  to  their  respective  States  as 
well  as  to  the  United  States,  they  might  present  some 
claims  to  be  considered  the  States ;  but  this  they  did 
not  do,  and  they  were  not  powerful  enough  to  do  it. 
The  large  proportion  of  them  were  compelled  to  form 
a  part  of  the  Rebel  power. 

And  this  brings  us  directly  to  the  heart  of  the  mat 
ter.  It  is  asserted  that  the  Acts  of  Secession,  being 
unconstitutional,  were  inoperative  and  void.  But  they 
were  passed  by  the  people  of  the  several  States  which 
seceded,  and  the  persons  and  property  of  the  whole 
people  were  indiscriminately  employed  in  making 
them  effective.  The  States  held  by  Rebel  armies 


214     RECONSTRUCTION  AND   NEGRO   SUFFRAGE. 

were  Rebel  States.  All  the  population  were  necessa 
rily,  in  the  view  of  the  Federal  Government,  Rebel 
enemies.  Consequently  the  territory  of  the  States 
was  as  "  void  "  of  citizens  of  the  United  States  as  the 
Acts  of  Secession  were  "  void."  The  only  things  left, 
then,  were  the  inoperative  ideas  of  States. 

Again,  to  put  the  argument  in  another  form,  it  is 
asserted  that,  though  the  people  of  a  State  may  com 
mit  treason,  the  State  itself  remains  unaffected  by  the 
crime.  A  distinction  is  here  made  between  a  State 
and  the  people  who  constitute  it,  —  between  the  State 
and  the  persons  who  create  its  constitution  and  organ 
ize  its  government.  The  State  constitution  which  ex 
isted  while  it  was  a  State,  in  the  Federal  meaning  of 
the  word,  was  destroyed  in  an  essential  part  by  the 
same  authority  which  created  it,  namely,  a  convention 
of  the  people  of  the  State ;  and  yet  it  is  said  that 
the  State  remained  unaffected  by  the  deed.  By  this 
course  of  reasoning,  a  State  is  defined  an  abstract 
essence  which  can  comfortably  exist  in  all  its  rights 
and  privileges,  in  potentia,  apart  from  all  visible  em 
bodiment  ;  a  State  which  is  the  possibility  of  a  State 
and  not  the  actuality  of  one ;  a  State  which  can  be 
brought  into  the  line  of  real  vision  only  by  some  such 
contrivance  as  that  employed  by  the  German  play 
wright,  who,  in  a  drama  on  the  subject  of  the  Crea 
tion,  represented  Adam  crossing  the  stage  going  to 
be  created. 

There  is,  it  is  true,  one  method  of  getting  a  kind  of 
body  to  this  abstract  State,  but  it  is  a  method  which 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO   SUFFRAGE.      215 

may  well  frighten  the  hardiest  American  reasoner. 
It  was  employed  by  Burke  in  one  of  the  audacities  of 
his  logic  directed  against  the  governments  established 
after  the  French  Revolution  of  1789.  He  took  the 
ground  that  France  was  not  in  the  French  territory 
or  in  the  French  people,  but  in  the  persons  who  repre 
sented  its  old  polity,  and  who  had  escaped  into  Eng 
land  and  Germany.  These  constituted  what  he  called 
"  Moral  France,"  in  distinction  from  "  Geographical 
France  ;  "  and  Moral  France,  he  said,  had  emigrated. 

But  as  few  or  none  will  be  inclined  to  take  the 
ground  that  South  Carolina  and  Georgia  exist  in  the 
persons  who  left  their  soil   on  the  breaking  out  of 
the  Rebellion,  we  are  forced  back  to  the  conception 
of  an  invisible  spiritual  soul  and  essence  of  a  State  sur 
viving  its  bodily  destruction.     But  even  this  abstrac 
tion  must  still,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Federal 
Constitution,  be  conceived  of  as  owing  allegiance  to 
the  Federal  Government ;  and  it  can  confessedly  get 
a  new  body  only  by  the  exercise  of  Federal  authority. 
Its  leading  institution  has  been  destroyed  by  Federal 
power.     Its  old  legislature  and  governor,  who  alone, 
on  State  principles,  could  call  a  convention  of  the 
people,  are  spotted  all  over  with  treason,  and  might 
be  hanged  as  traitors,  by  the  law  of  the  United  States, 
while  engaged  in  measures  to  repair  the  broken  unity 
of  the  State  life,  — a  fact  which  is  of  itself  sufficient 
to  show  that  the  old  State  is  dead  beyond  all  bodily 
resurrection.     The  white  inhabitants  who  occupy  its 
old  geographical  limits  are  defeated  Rebels,  and  not 


216      RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

one  can  exercise  the  privilege  of  voting  without  taking 
an  oath  which  no  real  "  State  "  prescribes.     They  are 
all  born  again  into  citizens  by  a  Federal  fiat ;  they  are 
"  pardoned  "  into  voters  ;  they  derive  their  rights  not 
from  their  old  charters,  but  from  an  act  of  amnesty. 
Far  from  any  discrimination  being  made  between  loyal 
and  disloyal,  the  great  body  of  both  classes  are  com 
pelled  to  submit  to  Federal  terms  of  citizenship  or  be 
disfranchised ;  and  they  are  called  upon,  not  to  revive 
the  old  State,  but  to  make  a  new  one,  within  the  old 
State  lines.     And  all  this  would  result  from  the  ne 
cessity  of  the  case,  even  if  it  were  not  made  justifia 
ble  by  the  essential  sovereignty  of  the  United  States, 
of  which  the  war-power  is  but  an  incident.     But  if  the 
Federal  Government  can  thus  give  the  white  inhabi 
tants,  or  any  portion  of  them,  the  right  of  suffrage, 
cannot  it  confer  that  right  upon  the  black  freedmen  ? 
It  will  not  do,  at  this  stage,  to  say  that  the  Federal 
Government  has  no  right  to  prescribe  the  qualifica 
tions  of  voters  in  the  States ;  because,  in  the  case  of 
the  whites,  it  does  and  must  prescribe  them;   and 
President  Johnson  has  just  the  same  right  to  say  that 
negroes  shall  vote  as  to  say  that  pardoned  Rebels  shall 
vote.     The  right  of  States  to  decide  on  the  qualifica 
tions  of  its  electors  applies  only  to  loyal  States ;  it 
cannot  apply  to  political  communities  which  have  lost 
by  Rebellion  the  Federal  character  of  "  States,"  which 
notoriously  have  no  legitimate  State  authority  to  de 
cide  the  question  of  qualification,  and  which  are  now 
taking  the  preparatory  steps  of  forming  themselves 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NEGRO   SUFFRAGE.      217 

into  States  through  the  agency  of  provisional  Federal 
governors,  directing  voters,  constituted  such  by  Fed 
eral  authority,  to  elect  delegates  to  a  convention  of 
the  people.  It  is  a  misuse  of  constitutional  language 
to  call  North  Carolina  and  Mississippi  "  States,"  in  the 
same  sense  in  which  we  use  the  term  in  speaking  of 
Ohio  and  Massachusetts.  When  their  conventions 
have  framed  State  constitutions,  when  their  State  gov 
ernments  are  organized,  and  when  their  senators  and 
representatives  have  been  admitted  into  the  Congress 
of  the  United  States,  then,  indeed,  they  will  he  States, 
entitled  to  all  the  privileges  of  Ohio  and  Massachu 
setts  ;  and  woe  be  to  us,  if  they  are  reconstructed  on 
wrong  principles ! 

It  is  often  said  that,  although  the  Federal  Govern 
ment  may  have  the  right  and  power  to  decide  who 
shall  be  considered  "  the  people  "  of  the  Rebel  States, 
in  so  important  a  matter  as  the  conversion  of  them 
into  States  of  the  Federal  Union,  it  is  still  politic  and 
just  to  make  the  qualifications  of  voters  as  nearly  as 
possible  what  they  were  before  the  Rebellion.  Con 
ceding  this,  we  still  have  to  face  the  fact  that  a  large 
body  of  men,  held  before  the  war  as  slaves,  have  been 
emancipated,  and  added  to  the  body  of  the  people. 
They  are  now  as  free  as  the  white  men.  The  old  con 
stitutions  of  the  Slave  States  could  have  no  applica 
tion  to  the  new  condition  of  affairs.  The  change  in 
the  circumstances,  by  which  four  years  have  done  the 
ordinary  work  of  a  century,  demands  a  corresponding 
change  in  the  application  of  old  rules,  even  admitting 


218     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

that  we  should  take  them  as  a  guide.  Having  con 
verted  the  loyal  blacks  from  slaves  into  the  condition 
of  citizens  of  the  United  States,  there  can  be  no  reason 
or  justice  or  policy  in  allowing  them  to  be  made,  in 
localities  recently  Rebel,  the  subjects  of  whites  who 
have  but  just  purged  themselves  from  the  guilt  of 
treason. 

The  question  of  negro  suffrage  being  thus  reduced 
to  a  question  of  expediency,  to  be  decided  on  its  own 
merits,  the  first  argument  brought  against  it  is  based 
on  the  proposition  that  it  is  inexpedient  to  give  the 
privilege  of  voting  to  the  ignorant  and  unintelligent. 
This  sounds  well ;  but  a  moment's  reflection  shows 
us  that  the  objection  is  directed  simply  against  defi 
ciencies  of  education  and  intelligence  which  happen 
to  be  accompanied  with  a  black  skin.  Three  fifths  or 
three  fourths  of  the  poor  whites  of  the  South  cannot 
read  or  write  ;  and  they  are  cruelly  belied,  if  they  do 
not  add  to  their  ignorance  that  more  important  dis 
qualification  for  good  citizenship,  —  indisposition  or 
incapacity  for  work.  In  general,  the  American  sys 
tem  proceeds  on  the  idea  that  the  best  way  of  qualify 
ing  men  to  vote  is  voting,  as  the  best  way  of  teaching 
boys  to  swim  is  to  let  them  go  into  the  water.  "  Our 
national  experience,"  says  Chief-Justice  Chase,  in  a 
letter  to  the  New  Orleans  freedmcn, "  has  demonstrated 
that  public  order  reposes  most  securely  on  the  broad 
base  of  Universal  Suffrage.  It  has  proved,  also,  that 
universal  suffrage  is  the  surest  guaranty  and  most 
powerful  stimulus  of  individual,  social,  and  political 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE.      219 

progress."  But  even  if  we  take  the  ground  that  edu 
cation  and  suffrage,  though  not  actually,  should  prop 
erly  be,  indentical,  the  argument  would  not  apply  to 
the  case  of  the  f  reedmen.  What  we  need  primarily  at 
the  South  is  loyal  citizens  of  the  United  States,  and 
treason  there  is  in  inverse  proportion  to  ignorance. 
If,  in  reconstructing  the  Rebel  communities,  we  make 
suffrage  depend  on  education,  we  inevitably  put  the 
local  governments  into  the  hands  of  a  small  minority 
of  prominent  Confederates  whom  we  have  recently 
defeated ;  of  men  physically  subdued,  but  morally  re 
bellious  ;  of  men  who  have  used  their  education  simply 
to  destroy  the  prosperity  created  by  the  industry  of 
the  ignorant  and  enslaved,  and  who,  however  skilful 
they  may  be  as  "  architects  of  ruin,"  have  shown  no 
capacity  for  the  nobler  art  which  repairs  and  rebuilds. 
If,  on  the  other  hand,  we  make  suffrage  depend  on 
color,  we  disfranchise  the  only  portion  of  the  popula 
tion  on  whose  allegiance  we  can  thoroughly  rely,  and 
give  the  States  over  to  white  ignorance  and  idleness 
led  by  white  intrigue  and  disloyalty.  We  are  placed 
by  events  in  that  strange  condition  in  which  the  safety 
of  that  "republican  form  of  government"  we  desire 
to  insure  the  Southern  States  has  more  safeguards  in 
the  instincts  of  the  ignorant  than  in  the  intelligence 
of  the  educated.  The  right  of  the  freedmen,  not 
merely  to  the  common  privileges  of  citizens,  but  to 
own  themselves,  depends  on  the  connection  of  the 
States  in  which  they  live  with  the  United  States  be 
ing  preserved.  They  must  know  that  Secession  and 


220     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

State  Independence  mean  their  re-enslavement.  Sauls- 
bury  of  Delaware,  and  Willey  of  West  Virginia,  de 
clared  in  the  Senate,  in  1862,  that  the  Rebel  States, 
when  they  came  back  into  the  Union,  would  have  the 
legal  power  to  re-enslave  any  blacks  whom  the  Na 
tional  Government  might  emancipate ;  and  it  is  only 
the  plighted  faith  of  the  United  States  to  the  freed- 
men,  which  such  a  proceeding  would  violate,  which  can 
prevent  the  crime  from  being  perpetrated.  It  is  as 
citizens  of  the  United  States,  and  not  as  inhabitants 
of  North  Carolina  or  Mississippi,  that  their  freedom  is 
secure.  Their  instincts,  their  interests,  and  their  posi 
tion  will  thus  be  their  teachers  in  the  duties  of  citizen 
ship.  They  are  as  sure  to  vote  in  accordance  with  the 
most  advanced  ideas  of  the  time  as  most  of  the  em 
bittered  aristocracy  are  to  vote  for  the  most  retrograde. 
They  will,  though  at  first  ignorant,  necessarily  be  in 
political  sympathy  with  the  most  educated  voters  of 
New  York,  Ohio,  and  Massachusetts ;  if  they  were  as 
low  in  the  scale  of  being  as  their  bitterest  revilers  as 
sert,  they  would  still  be  forced  by  their  instincts  into 
intuitions  of  their  interests ;  and  their  interests  are 
identical  with  those  of  civilization  and  progress.  We 
suppose  that  those  who  think  them  most  degraded 
would  be  willing  to  concede  to  them  the  possession  of 
a  little  selfish  cunning;  and  a  little  selfish  cunning  is 
enough  to  bring  them  into  harmony  with  the  pur 
poses,  if  not  the  spirit,  of  the  largest-minded  philan 
thropy  and  statesmanship  of  the  North. 

It  is  claimed,  we  know,  by  some  of  the  hardiest 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO   SUFFRAGE.      221 

dealers  in  assertion,  that  the  freedmen  will  vote  as 
their  former  masters  shall  direct ;  but  as  this  argu 
ment  is  generally  put  forward  by  those  whose  sym 
pathies  are  with  the  former  masters  rather  than 
with  the  emancipated  bondmen,  one  finds  it  difficult 
to  understand  why  they  should  object  to  a  policy 
which  will  increase  the  power  of  those  whom  they 
wish  to  be  dominant.  The  circumstances,  however, 
under  which  credulous  ignorance  becomes  the  prey 
of  unscrupulous  intelligence  are  familiar  to  all  who 
have  observed  our  elections.  An  ignorant  Irish  Cath 
olic  may  be  the  victim  of  a  Pro-slavery  demagogue, 
because  the  latter  flatters  his  prejudices ;  but  can  he 
be  deceived  by  a  bigoted  Know-Nothing,  who  is  the 
object  of  them  ?  The  only  demagogue  who  could 
control  the  negro  would  be  an  abolition  demagogue, 
and  he  could  control  him  to  his  harm  only  when  the 
negro  was  deprived  of  his  rights.  The  slave-masters 
were  wont  to  pay  considerable  attention  to  zoology, 
—  not  because  they  were  interested  in  science,  but 
because  in  that  science  they  thought  they  could  ob 
tain  arguments  for  expelling  blacks  from  the  hu 
man  species.  In  their  zoological  studies,  did  they 
ever  learn  that  mice  instinctively  seek  the  protection 
of  the  cat,  or  that  the  deer  speeds  to,  instead  of 
from,  the  hunter  ?  The  persons  whose  votes  the  late 
masters  would  be  most  likely  to  control  would  pal 
pably  be  those  whose  votes  they  always  have  con 
trolled,  namely,  the  poor  whites ;  for  in  the  late 
Slave  States  white  aristocrat  is  still  bound  to  white 


222      RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

democrat  by  the  strong  tie  of  a  common  contempt  of 
"  the  nigger."  Meanwhile  it  is  not  difficult  to  believe 
that,  among  four  millions  of  black  people,  there  are 
enough  plantation  Hampdens  and  Adamses  to  give  po 
litical  organization  to  their  brethren,  and  make  their 
votes  efficient  for  the  protection  of  their  interests. 

We  think,  then,  it  may  be  taken  for  granted  that, 
while  ignorant,  the  freedmen  will  vote  right  by  the 
force  of  their  instincts,  and  that  the  education  they 
require  will  be  the  result  of  their  possessing  the  po 
litical  power  to  demand  it.  Free  schools  are  not  the 
creations  of  private  benevolence,  but  of  public  taxa 
tion  ;  it  is  useless  to  expect  a  system  of  universal 
education  in  a  community  which  does  not  rest  on 
universal  suffrage ;  and  the  children  of  the  poor  free 
man  are  educated  at  the  public  expense,  not  so  much 
by  the  pleading  of  the  children's  needs  as  by  the 
power  of  the  father's  ballot.  To  take  the  ground 
that  the  "  superior"  race  will  educate  the  "inferior" 
race  it  has  but  just  held  in  bondage,  that  it  will 
humanely  set  to  work  to  prepare  and  qualify  the 
"  niggers  "  to  be  voters,  only  escapes  from  being  con 
sidered  the  artifice  of  the  knave  by  charitably  refer 
ring  it  to  the  credulity  of  the  simpleton.  We  do  not 
send,  as  Mr.  Sumner  has  happily  said,  "  the  child  to 
be  nursed  by  the  wolf ; "  and  he  might  have  added, 
that  the  only  precedent  for  such  a  proceeding,  the  case 
of  Romulus  and  Remus,  has  lost  all  the  little  force 
it  may  once  have  had  by  the  criticism  of  Niebuhr. 

If  the  negroes  do  not  get  the  power  of  political  self- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE.      223 

protection  in  the  conventions  of  the  people  which  are 
now  to  be  called,  it  is  not  reasonable  to  expect  they 
will  ever  get  it  by  the  consent  of  the  whites.     Legal 
State  conventions  are  called  by  previous  law.     There 
is  no  previous  State  law  applicable  to  the  Rebel  com 
munities,   because,   revolutionized    by   rebellion,   the 
very  persons  who  are  qualified  by  the  old  State  laws 
to  call  conventions  are  disqualified  by  the  laws  of  the 
United  States.     The  result  is,  that  the  people  are  an 
unorganized  mass,  to  be  reorganized  under  the  lead 
of  the  Federal   Government;   and   of   this   mass  of 
people — literally,  in  this  case  "the  masses"  —  the 
free  blacks  are  as  much  a  part  as  the  free  whites. 
As  soon,  however,  as  the  machinery  of  State  govern 
ments  is  set  in  motion  by  these  conventions,  —  as 
soon   as   these   governments   are   recognized   by   the 
President   and    Congress,  —  no   conventions   to  alter 
the  constitutions  agreed  upon  can  be  called,  except 
by  previous   State   laws.     If   negro   suffrage   is   not 
granted  in  the  election  of   members  to  the  present 
conventions,  the   power  will    pass  permanently  into 
the  hands  of   the  whites,   and  the  only  opportunity 
for  a  peaceful  settlement  of  the  question  will  be  lost. 
At  the  very  time  when,  abstractly,  no  party  has  legal 
rights,  and  only  one  party  has  claims,  we  propose  de 
liberately  to  sacrifice  the  party  that  has  claims  to  the 
party  which  will  soon  acquire  legal  rights  to  oppress 
the  claimants.     For,  disguise  it  as  we  may,  the  United 
States   Government   really   holds   and   exercises   the 
power  which   gives  vitality  to   the   preliminaries   of 


224      RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO   SUFFRAGE. 

reconstruction,  and  it  is  therefore  responsible  for  all 
evils  in  the  future  which  shall  spring  from  its  neglect 
or  injustice  in  the  present. 

The  addition,  too,  of  four  millions  of  persons  to  the 
people  of  the  South,  without  any  corresponding  addi 
tion  of  voters,  will  increase  the  political  power  of  the 
ruling  whites  to  an  alarming  extent,  while  it  will  re 
move  all  checks  on  its  mischievous  exercise.  The 
Constitution  declares  that  "  representatives  and  direct 
taxes  shall  be  apportioned  among  the  several  States 
which  may  be  included  in  this  Union,  according  to 
their  respective  numbers,  which  shall  be  determined 
by  adding  to  the  whole  number  of  free  persons,  in 
cluding  those  bound  to  service  for  a  term  of  years, 
and  excluding  Indians  not  taxed,  three  fifths  of  all 
other  persons."  The  unanswerable  argument  pre 
sented  at  the  time  against  the  clause  relating  to  the 
slaves  did  not  prevent  its  adoption.  "  If,"  it  was 
said,  "  the  negroes  are  property,  why  is  other  prop 
erty  not  represented  ?  if  men,  why  three  fifths  ? " 
Still,  the  South  has  always  enjoyed  the  double  privi 
lege  of  treating  the  negro  as  an  article  of  merchandise 
and  of  using  three  fifths  of  him  as  political  capital. 
He  has  thus  added  to  the  power  by  which  he  was  en 
slaved,  and  has  been  represented  in  Congress  by  per 
sons  who  regarded  him  either  as  a  beast  or  as  "  a 
descendant  of  Ham."  In  1860,  when  the  ratio  of 
representation  was  about  one  hundred  arid  twenty- 
seven  thousand,  the  South  had,  by  the  three-fifths 
rule,  the  right  to  eighteen  more  representatives  in 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND  NEGRO   SUFFRAGE.      225 

Congress,  and  eighteen  more  electoral  votes,  than 
it  would  have  had  if  only  free  persons  had  been 
counted.  The  emancipation  of  the  slaves  will  give 
it  twelve  more;  for  the  blacks  will  now  no  longer 
be  constitutional  fractions,  but  constitutional  units. 
The  three-fifths  arrangement  was  a  monstrous  anom 
aly ;  but  the  five-fifths  will  be  worse,  if  negro  suf 
frage  be  denied.  Four  millions  of  free  people  will, 
by  the  mere  fact  of  being  inhabitants  of  Southern 
territory,  confer  a  political  power  equal  to  thirty 
members  of  Congress,  and  yet  have  no  voice  in  their 
election.  It  has  been  computed  by  the  Honorable 
Robert  Dale  Owen,  in  a  paper  on  the  subject,  pub 
lished  in  the  New  York  "Tribune,"  that  in  some 
States,  where  the  blacks  and  whites  are  about  equal 
in  number,  and  where  two  thirds  of  the  whites  shall 
"  qualify "  as  voters,  this  new  condition  of  things 
will  give  the  Southern  white  voter,  in  a  Presiden 
tial  or  Congressional  election,  three  times  as  much 
political  influence  as  a  Northern  voter.  And  on 
whom  shall  we,  in  many  localities,  confer  this  im 
mense  privilege?  Here  is  Mr.  Owen's  description  of 
a  specimen  of  the  class  of  Southern  "  poor  whites " 
we  propose  thus  to  exalt. 

"  I  have  often  encountered  this  class.  I  saw  many 
of  them  last  year,  while  visiting,  as  member  of  a  Gov 
ernment  commission,  some  of  the  Southern  States.. 
Labor  degraded  before  their  eyes  has  extinguished 
within  them  all  respect  for  industry,  all  ambition,  all 
honorable  exertion  to  improve  their  condition.  When 

15 


226     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

last  I  had  the  pleasure  of  seeing  you  at  Nashville,  I 
met  there,  in  the  office  of  a  gentleman  charged  with 
the  duty  of  issuing  transportation  and  rations  to  indi 
gent  persons,  black  and  white,  a  notable  example  of 
this  strange  class.  He  was  a  Rebel  deserter, — a  rough, 
dirty,  uncouth  specimen  of  humanity,  —  tall,  stout, 
and  wiry-looking,  rude  and  abrupt  in  speech  and  bear 
ing,  and  clothed  in  tattered  homespun.  In  no  civil 
tone  he  demanded  rations.  When  informed  that  all 
rations  applicable  to  such  a  purpose  were  exhausted, 
he  broke  forth,  — 

" '  What  am  1  to  do,  then  ?  How  am  I  to  get 
home  ? ' 

"'You  can  have  no  difficulty,'  was  the  reply.  'It 
is  but  fifteen  or  eighteen  hours  down  the  river'  (the 
Cumberland)  '  by  steamboat  to  where  you  live.  I  fur 
nished  you  transportation  ;  you  can  work  your  way.' 

"'Work  my  way!'  (with  a  scowl  of  angry  con 
tempt.)  '  I  never  did  a  stroke  of  work  since  I  was 
born ;  and  I  never  expect  to,  till  my  dying  day.' 

"  The  agent  replied,  quietly,  — 

"'They  will  give  you  all  you  want  to  eat  on 
board,  if  you  help  them  to  wood.' 

" i  Carry  wood ! '  he  retorted,  with  an  oath.  '  When 
ever  they  ask  me  to  carry  wood,  I  '11  tell  them  they 
may  set  me  on  shore;  I'd  rather  starve  for  a  week 
than  work  for  an  hour;  I  don't  want  to  live  in  a 
world  that  I  can't  make  a  living  out  of  without  work.' 

"Is  it  for  men  like  that,  ignorant,  illiterate,  vi 
cious,  fit  for  no  decent  employment  on  earth  except 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO   SUFFRAGE.      227 

manual  labor,  and  spurning  all  labor  as  degrada 
tion,  —  is  it  in  favor  of  such  insolent  swaggerers 
that  we  are  to  disfranchise  the  humble,  quiet,  hard 
working  negro  ?  Are  the  votes  of  three  such  men 
as  Stanton  or  Seward,  Sumner  or  Garrison,  Grant 
or  Sherman,  to  be  neutralized  by  the  ballot  of  one 
such  worthless  barbarian  ?  " 

But  this  great  power,  wielded  by  a  population 
imperfectly  qualified  to  vote,  in  the  name  of  a 
population  which  do  not  vote  at  all,  —  a  power 
equivalent  to  thirty  members  of  Congress  and 
thirty  electoral  votes,  —  will  be  directed  as  much 
against  Northern  interests  as  against  negro  interests. 
Added  to  the  power  which  the  South  will  derive 
from  its  voting  population,  it  will  enable  that  sec 
tion  to  control  one  third  of  all  the  votes  in  the 
House  of  Representatives ;  and,  says  Professor  Par 
sons,  "if  they  stand  together,  and  vote  as  a  unit, 
they  will  need  only  about  one  sixth  more  to  get 
and  hold  control  of  our  national  legislation  and  all 
our  foreign  and  domestic  policy."  Our  political  ex 
perience  has  unfortunately  not  been  such  as  to  justify 
us  in  believing  it  to  be  impossible  for  any  party, 
under  a  resolute  Southern  lead,  to  obtain  one  sixth 
of  the  Northern  strength  in  Congress.  What  would 
be  the  result  of  such  a  combination  ?  Why,  the 
National  government  would  be  substantially  in  the 
hands  of  those  who  have  been  engaged  in  a  desper 
ate  struggle  to  overthrow  it;  and  it  would  be  a  gov 
ernment  converted  into  a  great  military  and  naval 


228     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

power  by  the  war  which  resulted  in  their  defeat,  and 
fully  competent  to  enforce  its  decisions  at  home  and 
abroad  by  the  strong  hand.  Nothing  is  purchased  at 
such  a  frightful  price  as  the  indulgence  of  a  preju 
dice  ;  the  cry  against  "  nigger  equality  "  is  a  prejudice 
of  the  most  mischievous  kind ;  and  it  may  be  we 
shall  hereafter  find  cause  to  deplore  that,  when  we 
had  to  choose  between  "  nigger  equality  "  and  South 
ern  predominance,  our  choice  was  to  keep  the  "  nig 
ger  "  down,  even  if  we  failed  to  keep  ourselves  up. 

One  result  of  Southern  predominance  everybody 
can  appreciate.  The  national  debt  is  so  interwoven 
with  every  form  of  the  business  and  industry  of  the 
loyal  States  that  its  repudiation  would  be  the  most 
appalling  of  evils.  A  tax  to  pay  it  at  once  would  not 
produce  half  the  financial  derangement  and  moral 
disorder  which  repudiation  would  cause ;  for  repudia 
tion,  as  Mirabeau  well  observed,  is  nothing  but  taxa 
tion  in  its  most  cruel,  unequal,  iniquitous,  and 
calamitous  form.  But  what  reason  have  AVC  to  think 
that  a  reconstructed  South,  dominant  in  the  Federal 
Government,  would  regard  the  debt  with  feelings  simi 
lar  to  ours  ?  The  negroes  would  associate  it  with 
their  freedom,  of  which  it  was  the  price ;  their  late 
masters  would  view  it  as  the  symbol  of  their  humilia 
tion,  which  it  was  incurred  to  effect.  We  must 
remember  that  the  South  loses  the  whole  cost  of 
Rebellion,  and  is  at  the  same  time  required  to  pay  its 
share  of  the  cost  of  suppressing  Rebellion.  The  cost 
of  Rebellion  is,  in  addition  to  the  devastation  of  prop- 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE.      229 

erty  caused  by  invasion,  the  whole  Southern  debt  of 
some  two  or  three  thousand  millions  of  dollars  ;  and 
the  market  value  of  the  slaves,  which,  estimating  the 
slaves  at  five  hundred  dollars  each,  is  two  thousand 
millions  of  dollars  more.  The  portion  of  the  cost  of 
suppressing  Rebellion  which  the  South  will  have  to 
pay  can  be  approximately  reached  by  taking  a  recent 
calculation  made  in  the  Census  Office  of  the  Depart 
ment  of  the  Interior. 

Estimating  the  national  debt  at  twenty-five  hundred 
millions  of  dollars,  and  apportioning  it  according  to 
the  number  of  the  white  male  adults  over  twenty 
years  of  age  in  the  different  sections  of  the  country, 
it  has  been  found  that  the  proportion  of  the  New- 
England  States  is  $308,689,352.07;  of  the  Mid 
dle  States,  1740,195,342.32;  of  the  Western  States, 
$893,288,781.01;  of  the  Southern  States,  $461,929,- 
846.85;  and  of  the  Pacific  States,  $95,896,677.75. 
This  calculation  makes  the  South  responsible  for  over 
four  hundred  and  sixty  millions  of  the  debt.  What 
amount  have  the  Southerners  invested  in  it  ?  Where 
both  interest  and  passion  furiously  impel  men  to  re 
pudiation,  can  they  be  trusted  with  the  care  of  the 
public  credit  ?  "  But,"  the  Northern  people  may  ex 
claim,  "  in  case  of  such  an  execrable  violation  of 
justice,  we  would  revolt, — .we  would-  Ah!  but 
in  whose  hands  would  then  be  "  the  war  power  "  ? 

From  every  point  of  view,  then,  in  which  we  can 
survey  the  subject,  negro  suffrage  is,  unless  we  are 
destitute  of  the  commonest  practical  reason,  the  logi- 


230     RECONSTRUCTION  AND  NEGRO  SUFFRAGE. 

cal  sequence  of  negro  emancipation.  It  is  not  more 
necessary  for  the  protection  of  the  freedmen  than  for 
.  the  safety  and  honor  of  the  nation.  Our  interests  are 
.  inextricably  bound  up  with  their  rights.  The  highest 
s  requirements  of  abstract  justice  coincide  with  the 
lowest  requirements  of  political  prudence.  And  the 
largest  justice  to  the  loyal  blacks  is  the  real  condition 
of  the  widest  clemency  to  the  Rebel  whites.  If  the 
Southern  communities  are  to  be  re-organized  into 
Federal  States,  it  is  of  the  first  importance  that  they 
should  be  States  whose  power  rests  on  the  proscription 
or  degradation  of  no  class  of  their  population.  It  would 
be  a  great  evil,  if  they  were  absolutely  governed  by  a 
faction,  even  if  that  faction  were  a  minority  of  the 
"  loyal "  people,  whose  loyalty  consisted  in  merely 
taking  an  oath  which  the  most  unscrupulous  would 
be  the  readiest  to  take,  because  the  readiest  to  break. 
We  are  bound  either  to  give  them  a  republican  form 
of  government,  or  to  hold  them  in  the  grasp  of  the 
military  power  of  the  nation ;  and  we  cannot  safely 
give  them  anything  which  approaches  a  republican 
form  of  government,  unless  we  allow  the  great  mass 
of  the  free  people  the  right  to  vote.  And  least  of  all 
should  we  think  of  proscribing  that  particular  class 
of  the  free  people  who  most  thoroughly  represent  in 
their  localities  the  interests  of  the  United  States,  and 
whose  ballots  would  at  once  do  the  work  and  save 
the  expense  of  an  army  of  occupation. 

August,  1865. 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

THE  President  of  the  United  States  has  so  singular 
a  combination  of  defects  for  the  office  of  a  constitu 
tional  magistrate,  that  he  could  have  obtained  the 
opportunity  to  misrule  the  nation  only  by  a  visitation 
of  Providence.  Insincere  as  well  as  stubborn,  cun 
ning  as  well  as  unreasonable,  vain  as  well  as  ill- 
tempered,  greedy  of  popularity  as  well  as  arbitrary 
in  disposition,  veering  in  his  mind  as  well  as  fixed  in 
his  will,  he  unites  in  his  character  the  seemingly 
opposite  qualities  of  demagogue  and  autocrat,  and 
converts  the  Presidential  chair  into  a  stump  or  a 
throne,  according  as  the  impulse  seizes  him  to  cajole 
or  to  command.  Doubtless  much  of  the  evil  devel 
oped  in  him  is  due  to  his  misfortune  in  having  been 
lifted  by  events  to  a  position  which  he  lacked  the 
elevation  and  breadth  of  intelligence  adequately  to 
fill.  He  was  cursed  with  the  possession  of  a  power 
and  authority  which  no  man  of  narrow  mind,  bitter 
prejudices,  and  inordinate  self-estimation  can  exercise 
without  depraving  himself  as  well  as  injuring  the 
nation.  Egotistic  to  the  point  of  mental  disease,  he 
resented  the  direct  and  manly  opposition  of  statesmen 
to  his  opinions  and  moods  as  a  personal  affront,  and 


232  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

descended  to  the  last  degree  of  littleness  in  a  political 
leader,  —  that  of  betraying  his  party,  in  order  to 
gratify  his  spite.  He  of  course  became  the  prey  of 
intriguers  and  sycophants,  —  of  persons  who  under 
stand  the  art  of  managing  minds  which  are  at  once 
arbitrary  and  weak,  by  allowing  them  to  retain  unity 
of  will  amid  the  most  palpable  inconsistencies  of  opin 
ion,  so  that  inconstancy  to  principle  shall  not  weaken 
force  of  purpose,  nor  the  emphasis  be  at  all  abated 
with  which  they  may  bless  to-day  what  yesterday  they 
cursed.  Thus  the  abhorrer  of  traitors  has  now  become 
their  tool.  Thus  the  denouncer  of  Copperheads  has 
now  sunk  into  dependence  on  their  support.  Thus 
the  imposer  of  conditions  of  reconstruction  has  now 
become  the  foremost  friend  of  the  unconditioned  re 
turn  of  the  Rebel  States.  Thus  the  furious  Union 
Republican,  whose  harangues  against  his  political 
opponents  almost  scared  his  political  friends  by  their 
violence,  has  now  become  the  shameless  betrayer  of 
the  people  who  trusted  him.  And  in  all  these  changes 
of  base  he  has  appeared  supremely  conscious,  in  his 
own  mind,  of  playing  an  independent,  a  consistent, 
and  especially  a  conscientious  part. 

Indeed,  Mr.  Johnson's  character  would  be  imper 
fectly  described  if  some  attention  were  not  paid  to  his 
conscience,  the  purity  of  which  is  a  favorite  subject  of 
his  own  discourse,  and  the  perversity  of  which  is  the 
wonder  of  the  rest  of  mankind.  As  a  public  man,  his 
real  position  is  similar  to  that  of  a  commander  of  an 
army,  who  should  pass  over  to  the  ranks  of  the  enemy 


THE  JOHNSON  PAKTY.  233 

he  was   commissioned   to   fight,  and  then  plead  his 
individual  convictions  of  duty  as  a  justification  of  his 
treachery.     In  truth,  Mr.  Johnson's  conscience  is,  like 
his  understanding,  a  mere  form  or  expression  of  his 
will.     The  will  of  ordinary  men  is  addressed  through 
their  understanding  and  conscience.     Mr.  Johnson's 
understanding  and  conscience  can  be  addressed  only 
through  his  will.     He  puts  intellectual  principles  and 
the  moral  law  in  the  possessive  case,  thinks  he  pays 
them  a  compliment  and  adds  to  their  authority  when 
he  makes  them  the  adjuncts  of  his  petted  pronoun 
"  my  ; "  and  things  to  him  are  reasonable  and  right, 
not   from   any  quality   inherent   in   themselves,   but 
because   they    are   made    so    by   his   determinations. 
Indeed,  he  sees  hardly  anything  as  it  is,  but  almost 
everything  as  colored  by  his  own  dominant  egotism. 
Thus  he  is  never  weary  of  asserting  that  the  people 
are  on  his  side  ;  yet  his  method  of  learning  the  wishes 
of  the  people  is  to  scrutinize  his  own,  and,  when  act 
ing  out  his  own  passionate  impulses,  he  ever  insists 
that  he  is  obeying  public  sentiment.     Of  all  the  wilful 
men  who,  by  strange  chance,  have  found  themselves 
at  the  head  of  a  constitutional  government,  he  most 
resembles  the  last  Stuart  king  of  England,  James  II. ; 
and  the  likeness  is  increased  from  the  circumstance 
that   the   American   James   has,  in   his    supple    and 
plausible  Secretary  of  State,  one  fully  competent  to 
play  the  part  of  Sunderland. 

The  party  which,  under  the  ironical  designation  of 
the  National  Union  Party,  now  proposes  to  take  the 


234  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

policy  and  character  of  Mr.  Johnson  under  its  charge, 
is  composed  chiefly  of  Democrats  defeated  at  the  polls 
and  Democrats  defeated  on  the  field  of  battle.  The 
few  apostate  Republicans,  who  have  joined  its  ranks 
while  seeming  to  lead  its  organization,  are  of  small 
account.  Its  great  strength  is  in  its  Southern  sup 
porters,  and,  if  it  comes  into  power,  it  must  obey  a 
Rebel  direction.  By  the  treachery  of  the  President, 
it  will  have  the  executive  patronage  on  its  side,  — for 
Mr.  Johnson's  "  conscience  "  is  of  that  peculiar  kind 
which  finds  satisfaction  in  arraying  the  interest  of 
others  against  their  convictions  ;  and  having  thus  the 
power  to  purchase  support,  it  will  not  fail  of  those 
means  of  dividing  the  North  which  come  from  cor 
rupting  it.  The  party  under  which  the  war  for  the 
Union  was  conducted  is  to  be  denounced  and  pro 
scribed  as  the  party  of  disunion,  and  we  are  to  be 
edified  by  addresses  on  the  indissoluble  unity  of  the 
nation  by  Secessionists,  who  have  hardly  yet  had  time 
to  wash  from  their  hands  the  stains  of  Union  blood. 
The  leading  proposition  on  which  this  conspiracy 
against  the  country  is  to  be  conducted  is  the  mon 
strous  absurdity  that  the  Rebel  States  have  an  inher 
ent,  "  continuous,"  unconditioned,  constitutional  right 
to  form  a  part  of  the  Federal  Government,  when  they 
have  once  acknowledged  the  fact  of  the  defeat  of  their 
inhabitants  in  an  armed  attempt  to  overthrow  and 
subvert  it,  —  a  proposition  which  implies  that  vic 
tory  paralyzes  the  powers  of  the  victors,  that  ruin 
begins  when  success  is  assured,  that  the  only  effect  of 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY.  235 

beating  a  Southern  Rebel  in  the  field  is  to  exalt  him 
into  a  maker  of  laws  for  his  antagonist. 

In  the  minority  Report  of  the  Congressional  Joint 
Committee  on  Reconstruction,  which  is  designed  to 
supply  the  new  party  with  constitutional  law,  this 
theory  of  State  Rights  is  most  elaborately  presented. 
The  ground  is  taken,  that  during  the  Rebellion  the 
States  in  which  it  prevailed  were  as  "  completely 
competent  States  of  the  United  States  as  they  were 
before  the  Rebellion,  and  were  bound  by  all  the 
obligations  which  the  Constitution  imposed,  and  en 
titled  to  all  its  privileges ; "  and  that  the  Rebellion 
consisted  merely  in  a  series  of  "  illegal  acts  of  the  citi 
zens  of  such  States."  On  this  theory  it  is  difficult  to 
find  where  the  guilt  of  rebellion  lies.  The  States  are 
innocent  because  the  Rebellion  was  a  rising  of  indi 
viduals  ;  the  individuals  cannot  be  very  criminal,  for 
it  is  on  their  votes  that  the  committee  chiefly  rely 
to  build  up  the  National  Union  Party.  Again,  we  are 
informed  that,  in  respect  to  the  admission  of  repre 
sentatives  from  "  such  States,"  Congress  has  no  right 
or  power  to  ask  more  than  two  questions.  These  are : 
"  Have  these  States  organized  governments  ?  Are  these 
governments  republican  in  form  ?  "  The  committee 
proceed  to  say  :  "  How  they  were  formed,  under  what 
auspices  they  were  formed,  are  inquiries  with  which 
Congress  has  no  concern.  The  right  of  the  people 
to  form  a  government  for  themselves  has  never  been 
questioned."  On  this  principle,  President  Johnson's 
labors  in  organizing  State  governments  were  works 


236  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

of  supererogation.  At  the  close  of  active  hostilities  the 
Rebel  States  had  organized,  though  disloyal,  govern 
ments  as  republican  in  form  as  they  were  before  the 
war  broke  out.  The  only  thing,  therefore,  they  were  re 
quired  to  do  was  to  send  their  Senators  and  Representa 
tives  to  Washington.  Congress  could  not  have  right 
fully  refused  to  receive  them,  because  all  questions  as 
to  their  being  loyal  or  disloyal,  and  as  to  the  changes 
which  the  war  had  wrought  in  the  relations  of  the 
States  they  represented  to  the  Union,  were  inquiries 
with  which  Congress  had  no  concern  !  And  here 
again  we  have  the  ever-recurring  difficulty  respecting 
the  "  individuals  "  who  were  alone  guilty  of  the  acts 
of  rebellion.  "  The  right  of  the  people,"  we  are  as 
sured,  "to  form  a  government  for  themselves,  has 
never  been  questioned."  But  it  happens  that  "  the 
people  "  here  indicated  are  the  very  individuals  who 
were  before  pointed  out  as  alone  responsible  for  the 
Rebellion.  In  the  exercise  of  their  right  "  to  form  a 
government  for  themselves,"  they  rebelled ;  and  now,  it 
seems,  by  the  exercise  of  the  same  right,  they  can  un 
conditionally  return.  There  is  no  wrong  anywhere:  it 
is  all  "  right."  The  people  are  first  made  criminals,  in 
order  to  exculpate  the  States,  and  then  the  innocence 
of  the  States  is  used  to  exculpate  the  people.  When 
we  see  such  outrages  on  common  sense  gravely  perpe 
trated  by  so  eminent  a  lawyer  as  the  one  who  drew  up 
the  committee's  Report,  one  is  almost  inclined  to  define 
minds  as  of  two  kinds,  the  legal  mind  and  the  human 
mind,  and  to  doubt  if  there  is  any  possible  connection 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY.  237 

in  reason  between  the  two.  To  the  human  mind  it  ap 
pears  that  the  Federal  Government  has  spent  thirty-five 
hundred  millions  of  dollars,  and  sacrificed  three  hun 
dred  thousand  lives,  in  a  contest  which  the  legal  mind 
dissolves  into  a  mere  mist  of  unsubstantial  phrases  ;  and 
by  skill  in  the  trick  of  substituting  words  for  things, 
and  definitions  for  events,  the  legal  mind  proceeds 
to  show  that  these  words  and  definitions,  though  scru 
pulously  shielded  from  any  contact  with  realities,  are 
sufficient  to  prevent  the  nation  from  taking  ordinary 
precautions  against  the  recurrence  of  calamities  fresh 
in  its  bitter  experience.  The  phrase  "  State  Rights," 
translated  from  legal  into  human  language,  is  found 
to  mean,  the  power  to  commit  wrongs  on  individuals 
whom  States  may  desire  to  oppress,  or  the  power  to 
protect  the  inhabitants  of  States  from  the  conse 
quences  of  their  own  crimes.  The  minority  of  the 
committee,  indeed,  seem  to  have  forgotten  that  there 
has  been  any  real  war,  and  bring  to  mind  the  con 
verted  Australian  savage,  whom  the  missionary  could 
not  make  penitent  for  a  murder  committed  the  day 
before,  because  the  trifling  occurrence  had  altogether 
passed  from  his  recollection. 

In  fact,  all  attempts  to  discriminate  between  Rebels 
and  Rebel  States,  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter,  are 
done  in  defiance  of  notorious  facts.  If  the  Rebellion 
had  been  merely  a  rising  of  individual  citizens  of 
States,  it  would  have  been  an  insurrection  against  the 
States,  as  well  as  against  the  Federal  Government, 
and  might  have  been  easily  put  down.  In  that  case, 


238  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

there  would  have  been  no  withdrawal  of  Southern 
Senators  and  Representatives  from  Congress,  and 
therefore  no  question  as  to  their  inherent  right  to 
return.  In  Missouri  and  Kentucky,  for  example, 
there  was  civil  war,  waged  by  inhabitants  of  those 
States  against  their  local  governments,  as  well  as 
against  the  United  States  ;  and  nobody  contends  that 
the  rights  and  privileges  of  those  States  were  for 
feited  by  the  criminal  acts  of  their  citizens.  But  the 
real  strength  of  the  Rebellion  consisted  in  this,  that 
it  was  not  a  rebellion  against  States,  but  a  rebellion 
by  States.  No  loose  assemblage  of  individuals,  though 
numbering  hundreds  of  thousands,  could  long  have 
resisted  the  pressure  of  the  Federal  power  and  the 
power  of  the  State  governments.  They  would  have 
had  no  -means  of  subsistence  except  those  derived 
from  plunder  and  voluntary  contributions,  and  they 
would  have  lacked  the  military  organization  by  which 
mobs  are  transformed  into  formidable  armies.  But 
the  Rebellion  being  one  of  States,  being  virtually  de 
creed  by  the  people  of  States  assembled  in  convention, 
was  sustained  by  the  two  tremendous  governmental 
powers  of  taxation  and  conscription.  The  willing 
and  the  unwilling  were  thus  equally  placed  at  the  dis 
position  of  a  strong  government.  The  population  and 
wealth  of  the  whole  immense  region  of  country  in 
which  the  Rebellion  prevailed  were  at  the  service  of 
this  government.  So  completely  was  it  a  rebellion 
of  States,  that  the  universal  excuse  of  the  minority 
of  original  Union  men  for  entering  heartily  into  the 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY.  239 

contest  after  it  had  once  begun  was,  that  they  thought 
it  their  duty  to  abide  by  the  decision,  and  share  the 
fortunes,  of  their  respective  States.  Nobody  at  the 
South  believed  at  the  time  the  war  commenced,  or 
during  its  progress,  that  his  State  possessed  any  "  con 
tinuous  "  right  to  a  participation  in  the  privileges  of 
the  Federal  Constitution,  the  obligations  of  which  it 
had  repudiated.  When  confident  of  success,  the  South 
erner  scornfully  scouted  the  mere  suspicion  of  enter 
taining  such  a  degrading  notion  ;  when  assured  of  de 
feat,  his  only  thought  was  to  "  get  his  State  back  into 
the  Union  on  the  best  terms  that  could  be  made." 
The  idea  of  "  conditions  of  readmission  "  was  as  firmly 
fixed  in  the  Southern  as  in  the  Northern  mind.  If 
the  politicians  of  the  South  now  adopt  the  principle 
that  the  Rebel  States  have  not,  as  States,  ever  altered 
their  relations  to  the  Union,  they  do  it  from  policy, 
finding  that  its  adoption  will  give  them  "  better  terms  " 
than  they  ever  dreamed  of  getting  before  the  Presi 
dent  of  the  United  States  taught  them  that  it  would 
be  more  politic  to  bully  than  to  plead. 

In  the  last  analysis,  indeed,  the  theory  of  the 
minority  of  the  Reconstruction  Committee  reduces 
the  Rebel  States  to  mere  abstractions.  It  is  plain 
that  a  State,  in  the  concrete,  is  constituted  by  that 
portion  of  the  inhabitants  who  form  its  legal  people ; 
and  that,  in  passing  back  of  its  government  and  con 
stitution,  we  reach  a  convention  of  the  legal  people  as 
its  ultimate  expression.  By  such  conventions  the 
acts  of  secession  were  passed ;  and,  as  far  as  the 


240  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

people  of  the  Rebel  States  could  do  it,  they  destroyed 
their  States  considered  as  organized  communities 
forming  a  part  of  the  United  States.  The  claim  of 
the  United  States  to  authority  over  the  territory  and 
inhabitants  was  of  course  not  affected  by  these  acts ; 
but  in  what  condition  did  they  place  the  people  ? 
Plainly  in  the  condition  of  rebels  engaged  in  an  attempt 
to  overturn  the  Constitution  and  government  of  the 
United  States.  As  the  whole  force  of  the  people  in  each 
of  the  Rebel  communities  was  engaged  in  this  work, 
the  whole  of  the  people  were  rebels  and  public  enemies. 
Nothing  was  left,  in  each  case,  but  an  abstract  State, 
without  any  external  body,  and  as  destitute  of  people 
having  a  right  to  enjoy  the  privileges  of  the  Constitu 
tion  as  if  the  territory  had  been  swept  clean  of  popu 
lation  by  a  pestilence.  It  is,  then,  only  this  abstract 
State  which  has  a  right  to  representation  in  Congress. 
But  how  can  there  be  a  right  to  representation  when 
there  is  nobody  to  be  represented  ?  All  this  may 
appear  puerile  ;  but  the  puerility  is  in  the  premises 
as  well  as  in  the  logical  deductions,  and  the  premises 
are  laid  down  as  indisputable  constitutional  princi 
ples  by  the  eminent  jurists  who  supply  ideas  for  the 
National  Union  Party. 

The  doctrine  of  the  unconditional  right  of  the 
Rebel  States  to  representation  being  thus  a  demon 
strated  absurdity,  the  only  question  relates  to  the 
conditions  which  Congress  proposes  to  impose.  Cer 
tainly  these  conditions,  as  embodied  in  the  constitu 
tional  amendment  which  has  passed  both  houses  by 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY.  241 

such  overwhelming  majorities,  are  the  mildest  ever 
exacted  of  defeated  enemies  by  a  victorious  nation. 
There  is  not  a  distinctly  "  radical  "  idea  in  the  whole 
amendment,  —  nothing  that  President  Johnson  has 
not  himself,  within  a  comparatively  recent  period, 
stamped  with  his  high  approbation.  Does  it  ordain 
universal  suffrage  ?  No.  Does  it  ordain  impartial 
suffrage  ?  No.  Does  it  proscribe,  disfranchise,  or  ex 
patriate  the  recent  armed  enemies  of  the  country,  or 
confiscate  their  property  ?  No.  It  simply  ordains 
that  the  national  debt  shall  be  paid  and  the  Rebel 
debt  repudiated  ;  that  the  civil  rights  of  all  persons 
shall  be  maintained  ;  that  Rebels  who  have  added 
perjury  to  treason  shall  be  disqualified  for  office  ;  and 
that  the  Rebel  States  shall  not  have  their  political 
power  in  the  Union  increased  by  the  presence  on  their 
soil  of  persons  to  whom  they  deny  political  rights, 
but  that  representation  shall  be  based  throughout  the 
Republic  on  voters,  and  not  on  population.  The  pith 
of  the  whole  amendment  is  in  the  last  clause ;  and  is 
there  anything  in  that  to  which  reasonable  objection 
can  be  made  ?  Would  it  not  be  a  curious  result  of 
the  war  against  Rebellion,  that  it  should  end  in  con 
ferring  on  a  Rebel  voter  in  South  Carolina  a  power 
equal,  in  national  affairs,  to  that  of  two  loyal  voters  in 
New  York  ?  Can  any  Democrat  have  the  face  to  assert 
that  the  South  should  have,  through  its  disfranchised 
negro  freemen  alone,  a  power  in  the  Electoral  College 
and  in  the  national  House  of  Representatives  equal  to 
that  of  the  States  of  Ohio  and  Indiana  combined  ? 

16 


242 


THE  JOHNSON   PARTY. 


Yet    these   conditions,   so   conciliatory,   moderate, 
lenient,  almost  timid,  and  which,  by  the  omission  of 
impartial  suffrage,  fall  very  far   below  the   require 
ments  of  the  average  sentiment  of  the  loyal  nation, 
are  still  denounced  by  the  new  party  of  "  Union  "  as 
the  work  of  furious  radicals,  bent  on  destroying  the 
rights  of  the  States.     Thus  Governor  James  L.  Orr, 
of  South  Carolina,  a  leading  Rebel  pardoned  into  a 
Johnsonian  Union  man,  implores  the  people  of  that 
region  to  send  delegates  to  the  Philadelphia  Conven 
tion,  on  the  ground  that  its  purpose  is   to  organize 
"  conservative  "  men  of  all  sections  and  parties,  "  to 
drive  from  power  that  radical  party  who   are   daily 
trampling  under  foot  the  Constitution,  and  fast  con 
verting  a  constitutional  Republic  into  a  consolidated 
despotism."     The  terms  to  which  South  Carolina  is 
asked  to  submit,  before   she  can  be  made   the  equal 
of  Ohio  or  New  York  in  the  Union,  are  stated  to  be 
"too  degrading  and  humiliating  to  be  entertained  by 
a  freeman  for  a  single  instant."     When  we  consider 
that   this   "  radical    party "    constitutes    nearly   four 
fifths  of  the  legal  legislature  of  the  nation,  that  it  was 
the  party  which  saved  the  country  from  dismember 
ment  while  Mr.  Orr  and  his  friends  were  notoriously 
engaged  in  "  trampling  the  Constitution  under  foot," 
and  that  the  man  who  denounces  it  owes  his  forfeited 
life  to  its  clemency,  the  astounding  insolence  of  the 
impeachment  touches  the  sublime.     Here  is  confessed 
treason  inveighing  against  tried  loyalty,  in  the  name 
of  the  Constitution  it  has  violated  and  the  law  it  has 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY.  243 

broken !  But  why  does  Mr.  Orr  think  the  terms  of 
South  Carolina's  restored  relations  to  the  Union  "  too 
degrading  and  humiliating  to  be  entertained  by  a 
freeman  for  a  single  instant "  ?  Is  it  because  he 
wishes  to  have  the  Rebel  debt  paid  ?  Is  it  because  he 
desires  to  have  the  Federal  debt  repudiated  ?  Is  it  be 
cause  he  thinks  it  intolerable  that  a  negro  should  have 
civil  rights  ?  Is  it  because  he  resents  the  idea  that 
breakers  of  oaths,  like  himself,  should  be  disqualified 
from  having  another  opportunity  of  forswearing  them 
selves  ?  Is  it  because  he  considers  that  a  white 
Rebel  freeman  of  South  Carolina  has  a  natural  right 
to  exercise  double  the  political  power  of  a  white  loyal 
freeman  of  Massachusetts?  He  must  return  an  af 
firmative  answer  to  all  these  questions  in  order  to 
make  it  out  that  his  State  will  be  degraded  and  hu 
miliated  by  ratifying  the  amendment ;  and  the  neces 
sity  of  the  measure  is  therefore  proved  by  the  motives 
known  to  prompt  the  attacks  of  its  vilifiers. 

The  insolence  of  Mr.  Orr  is  not  merely  individual, 
but  representative.  It  is  the  result  of  Mr.  Johnson's 
attempt  "  to  produce  harmony  between  the  two  sec 
tions,"  by  betraying  the  section  to  which  he  owed  his 
election.  Had  it  not  been  for  his  treachery,  there 
would  have  been  little  difficulty  in  settling  the  terms 
of  peace,  so  as  to  avoid  all  causes  for  future  war; 
but,  from  the  time  he  quarrelled  with  Congress,  he 
has  been  the  great  stirrer-up  of  disaffection  at  the 
South,  and  the  virtual  leader  of  the  Southern  reac 
tionary  party.  Every  man  at  the  South  who  was 


244  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

prominent  in  the  Rebellion,  every  man  at  the  North 
who  was  prominent  in  aiding  the  Rebellion,  is  now 
openly  or  covertly  his  partisan,  and  by  fawning  on 
him  earns  the  right  to  defame  the  representatives  of 
the  people  by  whom  the  Rebellion  was  put  down. 
Among  traitors  and  Copperheads  the  fear  of  punish 
ment  has  been  succeeded  by  the  hope  of  revenge  ; 
elation  is  on  faces  which  the  downfall  of  Richmond 
overcast;  and  a  return  to  the  old  times,  when  a 
united  South  ruled  the  country  by  means  of  a  divided 
North,  is  confidently  expected  by  the  whole  crew  of 
political  bullies  and  political  sycophants  whose  profit 
is  in  the  abasement  of  the  nation.  .  It  is  even  said 
that  if  the  majority  of  the  "  Rump  "  Congress  can 
not  be  overcome  by  fair  means,  it  will  be  by  foul ; 
and  there  are  noisy  partisans  of  the  President  who 
assert  that  he  has  in  him  a  Cromwellian  capacity  for 
dealing  with  legislative  assemblies  whose  notions  of 
the  public  good  clash  with  his  own.  In  short,  we  are 
promised,  on  the  assembling  of  the  next  Congress,  a 
coup  d'etat. 

Garret  Davis,  of  Kentucky,  was,  we  believe,  the 
first  to  announce  this  executive  remedy  for  the  "  rad 
ical  "  disease  of  the  State,  and  it  has  since  been  often 
prescribed  by  Democratic  politicians  as  a  sovereign 
panacea.  General  McClernand,  indeed,  proposed  a 
scheme,  simpler  even  than  that  of  executive  recogni 
tion,  by  which  the  Southern  Senators  and  Represent 
atives  might  effect  a  lodgment  in  Congress.  They 
should,  according  to  him,  have  gone  to  Washington, 


THE  JOHNSON  PARTY.  245 

entered  the  halls  of  legislation,  and  proceeded  to  oc 
cupy  their  seats,  "  peaceably  if  they  could,  forcibly  if 
they  must ; "  but  the  record  of  General  McClernand 
as  a  military  man,  was  not  such  as  to  give  a  high 
degree  of  authority  to  his  advice  on  a  question  of 
carrying  positions  by  assault,  and,  there  being  some 
natural  hesitation  in  following  his  counsel,  the  golden 
opportunity  was  lost.  Mr.  Montgomery  Blair,  who 
professes  his  willingness  to  act  with  any  men, 
"  Rebels  or  any  one  else,"  to  put  down  the  radicals, 
is  never  weary  of  talking  to  conservative  conventions 
of  "  two  Presidents  and  two  Congresses."  There  can 
be  no  doubt  that  the  project  of  a  coup  d'etat  has 
become  dangerously  familiar  to  the  "  conservative " 
mind,  and  that  the  eminent  legal  gentlemen  of  the 
North  who  are  publishing  opinions  affirming  the  right 
of  the  excluded  Southern  representatives  to  their 
seats,  are  playing  into  the  hands  of  the  desperate 
gang  of  unscrupulous  politicians  who  are  determined 
to  have  the  right  established  by  force.  It  is  com 
puted  that  the  gain,  in  the  approaching  elections,  of 
twenty-five  districts  now  represented  by  Union  Re 
publicans,  will  give  the  Johnson  party,  in  the  next 
Congress,  a  majority  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
should  the  Southern  delegations  be  counted  ;  and  it  is 
proposed  that  the  Johnson  members  legally  entitled 
to  seats  should  combine  with  the  Southern  pretenders 
to  seats,  organize  as  the  House  of  Representatives 
of  the  United  States,  and  apply  to  the  President  for 
recognition.  Should  the  President  comply,  he  would 


246  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

be  impeached  by  an  unrecognized  House  before  an 
"  incomplete  "  Senate,  and,  if  convicted,  would  deny 
the  validity  of  the  proceeding.  The  result  would  be 
civil  war,  in  which  the  name  of  the  Federal  Govern 
ment  would  be  on  the  side  of  the  revolutionists. 
Such  is  the  programme  which  is  freely  discussed  by 
partisans  of  the  President,  considered  to  be  high  in 
his  favor ;  and  the  scheme,  it  is  contended,  is  the 
logical  result  of  the  position  he  has  assumed  as  to  the 
rights  of  the  excluded  States  to  representation.  It  is 
certain  that  the  present  Congress  is  as  much  the  Con 
gress  of  the  United  States  as  he  is  the  President  of 
the  United  States ;  but  it  is  well  known  that  he  con 
siders  himself  to  represent  the  whole  country,  while 
he  thinks  that  Congress  only  represents  a  portion  of 
it ;  and  he  has  in  his  character  just  that  combination 
of  qualities,  and  is  placed  in  just  those  anomalous 
circumstances,  which  lead  men  to  the  commission  of 
great  political  crimes.  The  mere  hint  of  the  possi 
bility  of  his  attempting  a  coup  d'etat  is  received  by 
some  Republicans  with  a  look  of  incredulous  surprise  ; 
yet  what  has  his  administration  been  to  such  persons 
but  a  succession  of  surprises  ? 

But  whatever  view  may  be  taken  of  the  President's 
designs,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  safety,  peace, 
interest,  and  honor  of  the  country  depend  on  the  suc 
cess  of  the  Union  Republicans  in  the  approaching 
elections.  The  loyal  nation  must  see  to  it  that  the 
Fortieth  Congress  shall  be  as  competent  to  override 
executive  vetoes  as  the  Thirty-Ninth,  and  be  equally 


THE  JOHNSON  PAKTY.  247 

removed  from  the  peril  of  being  expelled  for  one  more 
in  harmony  with  Executive  ideas.  The  same  earnest 
ness,  -energy,  patriotism,  and  intelligence  which  gave 
success  to  the  war,  must  now  be  exerted  to  reap  its 
fruits  and  prevent  its  recurrence.  The  only  danger 
is,  that  in  some  representative  districts  the  people 
may  be  swindled  by  plausibilities  and  respectabilities  ; 
for  when,  in  political  contests,  any  great  villany  is 
contemplated,  there  are  always  found  some  eminently 
respectable  men,  with  a  fixed  capital  of  certain  emi 
nently  conservative  phrases,  innocently  ready  to  fur 
nish  the  wolves  of  politics  with  abundant  supplies  of 
sheep's  clothing.  These  dignified  dupes  are  more 
than  usually  active  at  the  present  time  ;  and  the 
gravity  of  their  speech  is  as  edifying  as  its  emptiness. 
Immersed  in  words,  and  with  no  clear  perception  of 
things,  they  mistake  conspiracy  for  conservatism. 
Their  pet  horror  is  the  term  "  radical ;  "  their  ideal 
of  heroic  patriotism,  the  spectacle  of  a  great  nation 
which  allows  itself  to  be  ruined  with  decorum,  and 
dies  rather  than  commit  the  slightest  breach  of  con 
stitutional  etiquette.  This  insensibility  to  facts  and 
blindness  to  the  tendency  of  events,  they  call  wisdom 
and  moderation.  Behind  these  political  dummies  are 
the  real  forces  of  the  Johnson  party,  men  of  insolent 
spirit,  resolute  will,  embittered  temper,  and  unscru 
pulous  purpose,  who  clearly  know  what  they  are  after, 
and  will  hesitate  at  no  "  informality  "  in  the  attempt 
to  obtain  it.  To  give  these  persons  political  power 
will  be  to  surrender  the  results  of  the  war,  by  placing 


248  THE  JOHNSON  PARTY. 

the  government  practically  in  the  hands  of  those 
against  whom  the  war  was  waged.  No  smooth  words 
about  "  the  equality  of  the  States,"  "  the  necessity  of 
conciliation,"  "  the  wickedness  of  sectional  conflicts," 
will  alter  the  fact,  that,  in  refusing  to  support  Con 
gress,  the  people  would  set  a  reward  on  treachery 
and  place  a  bounty  on  treason.  "  The  South,"  says 
a  Mr.  Hill  of  Georgia,  in  a  letter  favoring  the  Phila 
delphia  Convention,  "  sought  to  save  the  Constitution 
out  of  the  Union.  She  failed.  Let  her  now  bring 
her  diminished  and  shattered  but  united  and  earnest 
counsels  and  energies  to  save  the  Constitution  in  the 
Union*"  The  sort  of  Constitution  the  South  sought 
to  save  by  warring  against  the  government  is  the 
Constitution  which  she  now  proposes  to  save  by  ad 
ministering  it !  Is  this  the  tone  of  pardoned  and 
penitent  treason  ?  Is  this  the  spirit  to  build  up  a 
"  National  Union  Party  "  ?  No ;  but  it  is  the  tone 
and  spirit  now  fashionable  in  the  defeated  Rebel 
States,  and  will  not  be  changed  until  the  autumn 
elections  shall  have  proved  that  they  have  as  little 
to  expect  from  the  next  Congress  as  from  the  present, 
and  that  they  must  give  securities  for  their  future 
conduct  before  they  can  be  relieved  from  the  penalties 
incurred  by  their  past. 

September,  1866. 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

ANDREW  JOHNSON  has  dealt  the  most  cruel  of  all 
blows  to  the  respectability  of  the  faction  which  re 
joices  in  his  name.     Hardly  had  the  political  Peck 
sniffs  and  Turveydrops  contrived  so  to  manage  the 
Johnson  Convention  at  Philadelphia  that  it  violated 
few  of  the  proprieties  of  intrigue  and  none  of  the 
decencies  of  dishonesty,  than  the  commander-in-chief 
of  the  combination  took  the  field  in  person,  with  the 
intention    of   carrying  the  country  by  assault.     His 
objective   point   was   the   grave    of    Douglas,   which 
became,  by  the  time  he  arrived,  the  grave  also  of  his 
own  reputation  and  the  hopes  of  his  partisans.     His 
speeches   on  the   route  were  a  volcanic  outbreak  of 
vulgarity,  conceit,  bombast,  scurrility,  ignorance,  in 
solence,  brutality,  and  balderdash.     Screams  of  laugh 
ter,  cries   of   disgust,  flushings  of   shame,  were   the 
various  responses  of  the  nation  he  disgraced  to  the 
harangues  of  this  leader  of  American  "conservatism." 
Never  before  did  the  first  office  in  the  gift  of  the 
people  appear  so  poor  an  object  of  human  ambition, 
as  when  Andrew  Johnson  made  it  an  eminence  on 
which  to  exhibit  inability  to  behave  and  incapacity  to 
reason.     His  low  cunning  conspired  with  his  devour 
ing  egotism  to  make  him  throw  off  all  the  restraints 


250     THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

of  official  decorum,  in  the  expectation  that  he  would 
find  duplicates  of  himself  in  the  crowds  he  addressed, 
and  that  mob  diffused  would  heartily  sympathize  with 
Mob  impersonated.  Never  was  blustering  demagogue 
led  by  a  distempered  sense  of  self-importance  into  a 
more  fatal  error.  Not  only  was  the  great  body  of  the 
people  mortified  or  indignant,  but  even  his  "  satraps 
and  dependents,"  even  the  shrewd  politicians  —  acci 
dents  of  an  Accident  and  shadows  of  a  shade  —  who 
had  labored  so  hard  at  Philadelphia  to  weave  a  cloak 
of  plausibilities  to  cover  his  usurpations,  shivered 
with  apprehension  or  tingled  with  shame  as  they 
read  the  reports  of  their  master's  impolitic  and  igno 
minious  abandonment  of  dignity  and  decency  in  his 
addresses  to  the  people  he  attempted  alternately  to 
bully  and  cajole.  That  a  man  thus  self-exposed  as 
unworthy  of  high  trust  should  have  had  the  face 
to  expect  that  intelligent  constituencies  would  send 
to  Congress  men  pledged  to  support  Ms  policy  and 
his  measures,  appeared  for  the  time  to  be  as  pitiable 
a  spectacle  of  human  delusion  as  it  was  an  exasperat 
ing  example  of  human  impudence. 

Not  the  least  extraordinary  peculiarity  of  these 
addresses  from  the  stump  was  the  immense  protu 
berance  they  exhibited  of  the  personal  pronoun.  In 
Mr.  Johnson's  speech,  his  "I"  resembles  the  geom 
eter's  description  of  infinity,  having  "its  centre  every 
where  and  its  circumference  nowhere."  Among  the 
many  kinds  of  egotism  in  which  his  eloquence  is  pro 
lific,  it  may  be  difficult  to  fasten  on  the  particular  one 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES.     251 

which  is  most  detestable  or  most  laughable  ;  but  it 
seems  to  us  that  when  his  arrogance  apes  humility  it 
is  deserving  perhaps  of  an  intenser  degree  of  scorn  or 
derision  than  when  it  riots  in  bravado.  The  most 
offensive  part  which  he  plays  in  public  is  that  of 
"  the  humble  individual,"  bragging  of  the  lowliness 
of  his  origin,  hinting  of  the  great  merits  which  could 
alone  have  lifted  him  to  his  present  exalted  station, 
and  representing  himself  as  so  satiated  with  the 
sweets  of  unsought  power  as  to  be  indifferent  to  its 
honors.  Ambition  is  not  for  him,  for  ambition  as 
pires  ;  and  what  object  has  he  to  aspire  to  ?  From 
his  contented  mediocrity  as  alderman  of  a  village,  the 
people  have  insisted  on  elevating  him  from  one  pin 
nacle  of  greatness  to  another,  until  they  have  at  last 
made  him  President  of  the  United  States.  He  might 
have  been  Dictator  had  he  pleased  ;  but  what,  to  a 
man  wearied  with  authority  and  dignity,  would  dic 
tatorship  be  worth  ?  If  he  is  proud  of  anything,  it 
is  of  the  tailor's  bench  from  which  he  started.  He 
would  have  everybody  to  understand  that  he  is  hum- 
ble^  —  thoroughly  humble.  Is  this  caricature?  No. 
It  is  impossible  to  caricature  Andrew  Johnson  when 
he  mounts  his  high  horse  of  humility  and  becomes  a 
sort  of  cross  between  Uriah  Heep  and  Josiah  Boun- 
derby  of  Cokctown.  Indeed,  it  is  only  by  quoting 
Dickens's  description  of  the  latter  personage  that  wo 
have  anything  which  fairly  matches  the  traits  sug 
gested  by  some  statements  in  the  President's  speeches. 
"  A  big,  loud  man,"  says  the  humorist,  "  with  a  stare 


252     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

and  a  metallic  laugh.  A  man  made  out  of  coarse 
material,  which  seemed  to  have  been  stretched  to 
make  so  much  of  him.  A  man  with  a  great  puffed 
head  and  forehead,  swelled  veins  in  his  temples,  and 
such  a  strained  skin  to  his  face,  that  it  seemed  to  hold 
his  eyes  open  and  lift  his  eyebrows  up.  A  man  with 
a  pervading  appearance  on  him  of  being  inflated  like 
a  balloon,  and  ready  to  start.  A  man  who  could 
never  sufficiently  vaunt  himself  a  self-made  man.  A 
man  who  was  continually  proclaiming,  through  that 
brassy  speaking-trumpet  of  a  voice  of  his,  his  old 
ignorance  and  his  old  poverty.  A  man  who  was  the 
Bully  of  humility." 

If  we  turn  from  the  moral  and  personal  to  the  men 
tal  characteristics  of  Mr.  Johnson's  speeches,  we  find 
that  his  brain  is  to  be  classed  with  notable  cases  of 
arrested  development.  He  has  strong  forces  in  his 
nature,  but  in  their  outlet  through  his  mind* they 
are  dissipated  into  a  confusing  clutter  of  unrelated 
thoughts  and  inapplicable  phrases.  He  seems  to  pos 
sess  neither  the  power  nor  the  perception  of  coherent 
thinking  and  logical  arrangement.  He  does  not  ap 
pear  to  be  aware  that  prepossessions  are  not  proofs, 
that  assertions  are  not  arguments,  that  the  proper 
method  to  answer  an  objection  is  not  to  repeat  the 
proposition  against  which  the  objection  was  directed, 
that  the  proper  method  of  unfolding  a  subject  is  not 
to  make  the  successive  statements  a  series  of  contra 
dictions.  Indeed,  he  seems  to  have  a  thoroughly  ani- 
malized  intellect,  destitute  of  the  notion  of  relations, 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.    253 

with  ideas  which  are  but  the  form  of  determinations, 
and  which  derive  their  force,  not  from  reason,  but 
from  will.  With  an  individuality  thus  strong  even 
to  fierceness,  but  which  has  not  been  developed  in  the 
mental  region,  and  which  the  least  gust  of  passion  in 
tellectually  upsets,  he  is  incapable  of  looking  at  any 
thing  out  of  relations  to  himself,  —  of  regarding  it 
from  that  neutral  ground  which  is  the  condition  of 
intelligent  discussion  between  opposing  minds.  In 
truth,  he  makes  a  virtue  of  being  insensible  to  the 
evidence  of  facts  and  the  deductions  of  reason,  pro 
claiming  to  all  the  world  that  he  has  taken  his  posi 
tion,  that  he  will  never  swerve  from  it,  and  that  all 
statements  and  arguments  intended  to  shake  his  re 
solves  are  impertinences,  indicating  that  their  authors 
are  radicals  and  enemies  of  the  country.  He  is  never 
weary  of  vaunting  his  firmness,  and  firmness  he  doubt 
less  has,  — the  firmness  of  at  least  a  score  of  mules ;  but 
events  have  shown  that  it  is  a  different  kind  of  firm 
ness  from  that  which  keeps  a  statesman  firm  to  his 
principles,  a  political  leader  to  his  pledges,  a  gentle 
man  to  his  word.  Amid  all  changes  of  opinion,  he 
has  been  conscious  of  unchanged  will ;  and  the  intel 
lectual  element  forms  so  small  a  portion  of  his  being, 
that,  when  he  challenged  "  the  man,  woman,  or  child 
to  come  forward  "  and  convict  him  of  inconstancy  to 
his  professions,  he  knew  that,  however  it  might  be 
with  the  rest  of  mankind,  he  would  himself  be  uncon 
vinced  by  any  evidence  which  the  said  man,  woman, 
or  child  might  adduce.  Again,  when  he  was  asked 


254     THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

by  one  of  his  audiences  why  he  did  not  hang  Jeff. 
Davis,  he  retorted  by  exclaiming,  "  Why  don't  you  ask 
me  why  I  have  not  hanged  Thad.  Stevens  and  Wendell 
Phillips  ?  They  are  as  much  traitors  as  Davis."  And 
we  are  almost  charitable  enough  to  suppose  that  he 
saw  no  difference  between  the  moral  or  legal  treason 
of  the  man  who  for  four  years  had  waged  open  war 
against  the  Government  of  the  United  States,  and  the 
men  who  for  one  year  had  sharply  criticised  the  acts 
and  utterances  of  Andrew  Johnson.  It  is  not  to  be 
expected  that  nice  distinctions  will  be  made  by  a  mag 
istrate  who  is  in  the  habit  of  denying  indisputable 
facts  with  the  fury  of  a  pugilist  who  has  received  a 
personal  affront,  and  of  announcing  demonstrated  fal 
lacies  with  the  imperturbable  serenity  of  a  philosopher 
proclaiming  the  fundamental  laws  of  human  belief. 
His  brain  is  entirely  ridden  by  his  will,  and  of  all  the 
public  men  in  the  country  its  official  head  is  the  one 
whose  opinion  carries  with  it  the  least  intellectual 
weight.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  our  institutions  and  our 
statesmen  that  the  man  least  qualified  by  largeness  of 
mind  and  moderation  of  temper  to  exercise  uncon 
trolled  power  should  be  the  man  who  aspired  to  usurp 
it.  The  constitutional  instinct  in  the  blood,  and  the 
constitutional  principle  in  the  brain,  of  our  real  states 
men,  preserve  them  from  the  folly  and  guilt  of  set 
ting  themselves  up  as  imitative  Caesars  and  Napo 
leons  the  moment  they  are  trusted  with  a  little  dele 
gated  power. 

Still  we  are  told  that,  with  all  his  defects,  Andrew 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES.     255 

Johnson  is  to  be  honored  and  supported  as  a  "  conser 
vative  "  President  engaged  in  a  contest  with  a  "  radi 
cal  "  Congress !  It  happens,  however,  that  the  two 
persons  who  specially  represent  Congress  in  this  strug 
gle  are  Senators  Trumbull  arid  Fessenden.  Senator 
Trumbull  is  the  author  of  the  two  important  measures 
which  the  President  vetoed ;  Senator  Fessenden  is  the 
chairman  and  organ  of  the  Committee  of  fifteen  which 
the  President  anathematizes.  Now,  we  desire  to  do 
justice  to  the  gravity  of  face  which  the  partisans  of 
Mr.  Johnson  preserve  in  announcing  their  most  ab 
surd  propositions,  and  especially  do  we  commend  their 
command  of  countenance  while  it  is  their  privilege  to 
contrast  the  wild  notions  and  violent  speech  of  such 
lawless  radicals  as  the  Senator  from  Illinois  and  the 
Senator  from  Maine,  with  the  balanced  judgment  and 
moderate  temper  of  such  a  pattern  conservative  as 
the  President  of  the  United  States.  The  contrast 
prompts  ideas  so  irresistibly  ludicrous,  that  to  keep 
one's  risibilities  under  austere  control  while  institut 
ing  it  argues  a  self-command  almost  miraculous. 

Andrew  Johnson,  however,  such  as  he  is  in  heart, 
intellect,  will,  and  speech,  is  the  recognized  leader  of 
his  party,  and  demands  that  the  great  mass  of  his 
partisans  shall  serve  him,  not  merely  by  prostration 
of  body,  but  by  prostration  of  mind.  It  is  the  hard 
duty  of  his  more  intimate  associates  to  translate  his 
broken  utterances  from  Andy-Johnsonese  into  consti 
tutional  phrase,  to  give  these  versions  some  show  of 
logical  arrangement,  and  to  carry  out,  as  best  they 


256     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

may,  their  own  objects,  while  professing  boundless  de 
votion  to  his.  By  a  sophistical  process  of  developing 
his  rude  notions,  they  often  lead  him  to  conclusions 
which  he  had  not  foreseen,  but  which  they  induce  him 
to  make  his  own,  not  by  a  fruitless  effort  to  quicken 
his  mind  into  following  the  steps  of  their  reasoning, 
but  by  stimulating  his  passions  to  the  point  of  adopt 
ing  its  results.  They  thus  become  parasites  in  order 
that  they  may  become  powers,  and  their  interests 
make  them  particularly  ruthless  in  their  dealings  with 
their  master's  consistency.  Their  relation  to  him,  if 
they  would  bluntly  express  it,  might  be  indicated  in 
this  brief  formula :  "  We  will  adore  you  in  order  that 
you  may  obey  us." 

The  trouble  with  these  politicians  is,  that  they  can 
not  tie  the  President's  tongue  as  they  tied  the  tongues 
of  the  eminent  personages  they  invited  from  all  por 
tions  of  the  country  to  keep  silent  at  their  great  Con 
vention  at  Philadelphia.  That  Convention  was  a 
masterpiece  of  cunning  political  management;  but 
its  Address  and  Resolutions  were  hardly  laid  at  Mr. 
Johnson's  feet,  when,  in  his  exultation,  he  blurted 
out  that  unfortunate  remark  about  "  a  body  called, 
or  which  assumed  to  be,  the  Congress  of  the  United 
States,"  which,  it  appears,  "  we  have  seen  hanging  on 
the  verge  of  the  Government."  Now  all  this  was  in 
the  Address  of  the  Convention,  but  it  was  not  so  bru 
tally  worded,  nor  so  calculated  to  appall  those  timid 
supporters  of  the  Johnson  party,  who  thought,  in  their 
innocence,  that  the  object  of  the  Philadelphia  meeting 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.     257 

was  to  heal  the  wounds  of  civil  war,  and  not  to  lay 
down  a  programme  by  which  it  might  be  reopened. 
Turning,  then,  from  Mr.  Johnson  to  the  manifesto  of 
his  political  supporters,  let  us  see  what  additions  it 
makes  to  political  wisdom,  and  what  guaranties  it 
affords  for  future  peace.  We  shall  not  discriminate 
between  insurgent  States  and  individual  insurgents, 
because,  when  individual  insurgents  are  so  overwhelm 
ingly  strong  that  they  carry  their  States  with  them, 
or  when  States  are  so  overwhelmingly  strong  that  they 
force  individuals  to  be  insurgents,  it  appears  to  be 
needless.  The  terms  are  often  used  interchangeably 
in  the  Address,  for  the  Convention  was  so  largely 
composed  of  individual  insurgents  that  it  was  impor 
tant  to  vary  a  little  the  charge  that  they  usurped  State 
powers  with  the  qualification  that  they  obeyed  the  pow 
ers  they  usurped.  At  the  South,  individual  insurgents 
constitute  the  State  when  they  determine  to  rebel,  and 
obey  it  when  they  desire  to  be  pardoned.  An  identical 
thing  cannot  be  altered  by  giving  it  two  names. 

The  principle  which  runs  through  the  Philadelphia 
Address  is,  that  insurgent  States  recover  their  former 
rights  under  the  Constitution  by  the  mere  fact  of  sub 
mission.  This  is  equivalent  to  saying  that  insurgent 
States  incurred  no  guilt  in  rebellion.  But  States  can 
not  become  insurgent  unless  the  authorities  of  such 
States  commit  perjury  and  treason,  and  their  people 
become  rebels  and  public  enemies ;  perjury,  treason, 
and  rebellion  are  commonly  held  to  be  crimes ;  and 
who  ever  heard,  before,  that  criminals  were  restored 

17 


258     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS.  ACCOMPLICES. 

to  all  the  rights  of  honest  citizens  by  the  mere  fact  of 
their  arrest  ? 

The  doctrine,  moreover,  is  a  worse  heresy  than 
that  of  Secession ;  for  Secession  implies  that  seceded 
States,  being  out  of  the  Union,  can  plainly  only  be 
brought  back  by  conquest,  and  on  such  terms  as  the 
victors  may  choose  to  impose.  No  candid  Southern 
Rebel,  who  believes  that  his  State  seceded,  and  that 
he  acted  under  competent  authority  when  he  took  up 
arms  against  the  United  States,  can  have  the  effron 
tery  to  affirm  that  he  had  inherent  rights  of  citizenship 
in  "  the  foreign  country  "  against  which  he  plotted  and 
fought  for  four  years.  The  so-called  "  right "  of  se 
cession  was  claimed  by  the  South  as  a  constitutional 
right,  to  be  peaceably  exercised,  but  it  passed  into  the 
broader  and  more  generally  intelligible  "right"  of 
revolution  when  it  had  to  be  sustained  by  war ;  and 
the  condition  of  a  defeated  revolutionist  is  certainly 
not  that  of  a  qualified  voter  in  the  nation  against 
which  he  revolted.  But  if  insurgent  States  recover 
their  former  rights  and  privileges  when  they  submit 
to  superior  force,  there  is  no  reason  why  armed  rebel 
lion  should  not  be  as  common  as  local  discontent. 
We  have,  on  this  principle,  sacrificed  thirty-five  hun 
dred  millions  of  dollars  and  three  hundred  thousand 
lives,  only  to  bring  the  insurgent  States  into  just  those 
"  practical  relations  to  the  Union  "  which  will  enable 
us  to  sacrifice  thirty-five  hundred  millions  of  dollars 
more,  and  three  hundred  thousand  more  lives,  when 
it  suits  the  passions  and  caprices  of  these  States  to 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.    259 

rebel  again.  Whatever  they  may  do  in  the  way  of  dis 
turbing  the  peace  of  the  country,  they  can  never,  it 
seems,  forfeit  their  rights  and  privileges  under  the 
Constitution.  Even  if  everybody  was  positively  cer 
tain  that  there  would  be  a  new  rebellion  in  ten  years, 
unless  conditions  of  representation  were  exacted  of 
the  South,  we  still,  according  to  the  doctrine  of  the 
Johnsonian  jurists,  would  be  constitutionally  impotent 
to  exact  them,  because  insurgent  States  recover  un 
conditioned  rights  to  representation  by  the  mere  fact 
of  their  submitting  to  the  power  they  can  no  longer 
resist.  The  acceptance  of  this  principle  would  make 
insurrection  the  chronic  disease  of  our  political  sys 
tem.  War  would  follow  war,  until  nearly  all  the 
wealth  of  the  country  was  squandered,  and  nearly 
all  the  inhabitants  exterminated.  Mr.  Johnson's 
prophetic  vision  of  that  Paradise  of  constitution 
alism,  shadowed  forth  in  his  exclamation  that  he 
would  stand  by  the  Constitution  though  all  around 
him  should  perish,  would  be  measurably  realized ; 
and  among  the  ruins  of  the  nation  a  few  haggard 
and  ragged  pedants  would  be  left  to  drone  out  eulo 
gies  on  "the  glorious  Constitution"  which  had  sur 
vived  unharmed  the  anarchy,  poverty,  and  depopu 
lation  it  had  produced.  An  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  which  thus  makes  it  the  shield  of  trea 
son  and  the  destroyer  of  civilization  must  be  false 
both  to  fact  and  sense.  The  framers  of  that  instru 
ment  were  not  idiots ;  yet  idiots  they  would  certainly 
have  been,  if  they  had  put  into  it  a  clause  declaring 


260     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

"  that  no  State,  or  combination  of  States,  which  may 
at  any  time  choose  to  get  up  an  armed  attempt  to 
overthrow  the  Government  established  by  this  Consti 
tution,  and  be  defeated  in  the  attempt,  shall  forfeit 
any  of  the  privileges  granted  by  this  instrument  to 
loyal  States."  Bat  an  interpretation  of  the  Consti 
tution  which  can  be  conceived  of  as  forming  a  possible 
part  of  it  only  by  impeaching  the  sanity  of  its  f  ramers, 
cannot  be  an  interpretation  which  the  American  people 
are  morally  bound  to  risk  ruin  to  support. 

But  even  if  we  should  be  wild  enough  to  admit  the 
Johnsonian  principle  respecting  insurgent  States,  the 
question  comes  up  as  to  the  identity  of  the  States 
now  demanding  representation  with  the  States  whose 
rights  of  representation  are  affirmed  to  have  been  only 
suspended  during  their  rebellion.  The  fact  would 
seem  to  be,  that  these  reconstructed  States  are  merely 
the  creations  of  the  executive  branch  of  the  Govern 
ment,  with  every  organic  bond  hopelessly  cut  which 
connected  them  with  the  old  State  governments  and 
constitutions.  They  have  only  the  names  of  the 
States  they  pretend  to  be.  Before  the  Rebellion, 
they  had  a  legal  people ;  when  Mr.  Johnson  took  hold 
of  them,  they  had  nothing  but  a  disorganized  popu 
lation.  Out  of  this  population  he  by  his  own  will 
created  a  people,  on  the  principle,  we  must  suppose, 
of  natural  selection.  Now,  to  decide  who  are  the  peo 
ple  of  a  State  is  to  create  its  very  foundations,  —  to 
begin  anew  in  the  most  comprehensive  sense  of  the 
word  ;  for  the  being  of  a  State  is  more  in  its  people, 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.    261 

that  is,  in  the  persons  selected  from  its  inhabitants 
to  be  the  depositaries  of  its  political  power,  than  it  is 
in  its  geographical  boundaries  and  area.  Over  this 
people  thus  constituted  by  himself,  Mr.  Johnson  set 
Provisional  Governors  nominated  by  himself.  These 
Governors  called  popular  conventions,  whose  mem 
bers  were  elected  by  the  votes  of  those  to  whom  Mr. 
Johnson  had  given  the  right  of  suffrage;  and  these 
conventions  proceeded  to  do  what  Mr.  Johnson  dic 
tated.  Everywhere  Mr.  Johnson ;  nowhere  the  as 
sumed  rights  of  the  States  !  North  Carolina  was  one 
of  these  creations ;  and  North  Carolina,  through  the 
lips  of  its  Chief  Justice,  has  already  decided  that  Mr. 
Johnson  was  an  unauthorized  intruder,  and  his  work 
a  nullity,  and  even  Mr.  Johnson's  "  people  "  of  North 
Carolina  have  rejected  the  constitution  framed  by  Mr. 
Johnson's  Convention.  Other  Rebel  communities  will 
doubtless  repudiate  his  work,  as  soon  as  they  can  dis 
pense  with  his  assistance.  But  whatever  may  be  the 
condition  of  these  new  Johnsonian  States,  they  are 
certainly  not  States  which  can  "  recover  "  rights  which 
existed  previous  to  their  creation.  The  date  of  their 
birth  is  to  be  reckoned,  not  from  any  year  previous  to 
the  Rebellion,  but  from  the  year  which  followed  its 
suppression.  It  may,  in  old  times,  have  been  a  politic 
trick  of  shrewd  politicians,  to  involve  the  foundations 
of  States  in  the  mists  of  a  mythical  antiquity ;  but  we 
happily  live  in  an  historical  period,  and  there  is  some 
thing  peculiarly  stupid  or  peculiarly  impudent  in  the 
attempt  of  the  publicists  of  the  Philadelphia  Con- 


262     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

vent-ion  to  ignore  the  origins  of  political  societies  for 
which,  after  they  have  obtained  a  certain  degree  of 
organization,  they  claim  such  eminent  traditional 
rights  and  privileges.  Respectable  as  these  States 
may  be  as  infant  phenomena,  it  will  not  do  to  Methu- 
selahize  them  too  recklessly,  or  assert  their  equality 
in  muscle  and  brawn  with  giants  full  grown. 

It  is  evident,  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  that  Mr. 
Johnson's  labors  were  purely  experimental  and  pro 
visional,  and  needed  the  indorsement  of  Congress  to 
be  of  any  force.  The  only  department  of  the  Govern 
ment  constitutionally  capable  to  admit  new  States  or 
rehabilitate  insurgent  ones  is  the  legislative.  When 
the  Executive  not  only  took  the  initiative  in  recon 
struction,  but  assumed  to  have  completed  it ;  when 
he  presented  his  States  to  Congress  as  the  equals  of 
the  States  represented  in  that  body  ;  when  he  as 
serted  that  the  delegates  from  his  States  should  have 
the  right  of  sitting  and  voting  in  the  legislature 
whose  business  it  was  to  decide  on  their  right  to 
admission ;  when,  in  short,  he  demanded  that  crimi 
nals  at  the  bar  should  have  a  seat  on  the  bench,  and 
an  equal  voice  with  the  judges,  in  deciding  on  their 
own  case,  the  effrontery  of  Executive  pretension  went 
beyond  all  bounds  of  Congressional  endurance. 

The  real  difference  at  first  was  not  on  the  question 
of  imposing  conditions,  —  for  the  President  had  no 
toriously  imposed  them  himself,  —  but  on  the  question 
whether  or  not  additional  conditions  were  necessary 
to  secure  the  public  safety.  The  President,  with  that 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.     263 

facility  "  in  turning  his  back  on  himself  "  which  all 
other  logical  gymnasts  had  pronounced  an  impossible 
feat,  then  boldly  took  the  ground  that,  being  satisfied 
with  the  conditions  he  had  himself  exacted,  the  exac 
tion  of  conditions  was  unconstitutional.  To  sustain 
this  curious  proposition  he  adduced  no  constitutional 
arguments,  but  he  left  various  copies  of  the  Constitu 
tion  in  each  of  the  crowds  he  recently  addressed, 
with  the  trust,  we  suppose,  that  somebody  might  be 
fortunate  enough  to  find  in  that  instrument  the  clause 
which  supported  his  theory.  Mr.  Johnson,  however, 
though  the  most  consequential  of  individuals,  is  the 
most  inconsequential  of  reasoners ;  every  proposition 
which  is  evident  to  himself  he  considers  to  fulfil  the 
definition  of  a  self-evident  proposition ;  but  his  sup 
porters  at  Philadelphia  must  have  known  that,  in 
affirming  that  insurgent  States  recover  their  former 
rights  by  the  fact  of  submission,  they  were  arraigning 
the  conduct  of  their  leader,  who  had  notoriously 
violated  those  "  rights."  They  took  up  his  work  at  a 
certain  stage,  and  then,  with  that  as  a  basis,  they 
affirmed  a  general  proposition  about  insurgent  States, 
which,  had  it  been  complied  with  by  the  President, 
would  have  left  them  no  foundation  at  all;  for  the 
States  about  which  they  so  glibly  generalized  would 
have  had  no  show  of  organized  governments.  The 
premises  of  their  argument  were  obtained  by  the  vio 
lation  of  its  conclusion  ;  they  inferred  from  what  was 
a  negation  of  their  inference,  and  deduced  from  what 
was  a  death-blow  to  their  deduction. 


264     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  understand  why  the  Johnson 
Convention  asserted  the  equality  of  the  Johnson  re 
constructions  of  States  with  the  States  now  repre 
sented  in  Congress.  The  object  was  to  give  some 
appearance  of  legality  to  a  contemplated  act  of  arbi 
trary  power ;  and  the  principle  that  insurgent  States 
recover  all  their  old  rights  by  the  fact  of  submission 
was  invented  in  order  to  cover  the  case.  Mr.  John 
son  now  intends,  by  the  admission  of  his  partisans,  to 
attempt  a  coup  d'etat  on  the  assembling  of  the  Forti 
eth  Congress,  in  case  seventy-one  members  of  the 
House  of  Representatives,  favorable  to  his  policy, 
are  chosen,  in  the  elections  of  this  autumn,  from  the 
twenty-six  loyal  States.  These,  with  the  fifty  South 
ern  delegates,  would  constitute  a  quorum  of  the  House  ; 
and  the  remaining  hundred  and  nineteen  members  are 
in  the  President's  favorite  phrase,  "  to-be  kicked  out " 
from  that  "  verge  "  of  the  Government  on  which  they 
now  are  said  to  be  "  hanging."  The  question,  there 
fore,  whether  Congress,  as  it  is  at  present  constituted, 
is  a  body  constitutionally  competent  to  legislate  for 
the  whole  country,  is  the  most  important  of  all  practi 
cal  questions.  Let  us  see  how  the  case  stands. 

The  Constitution,  ratified  by  the  people  of  all  the 
States,  establishes  a  Government  of  sovereign  powers, 
supreme  over  the  whole  land  ;  and  the  people  of  no 
State  can  rightly  pass  from  under  its  authority  except 
by  the  consent  of  the  people  of  all  the  States,  with 
whom  it  is  bound  by  the  most  solemn  and  binding  of 
contracts.  The  Rebel  States  broke,  in  fact,  the  con- 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.     265 

tract  they  could  not  break  in  right.  Assembled  in 
conventions  of  their  people,  they  passed  ordinances  of 
secession,  withdrew  their  Senators  and  Representa 
tives  from  Congress,  and  began  the  war  by  assailing 
a  fort  of  the  United  States.  The  Secessionists  had 
trusted  to  the  silence  of  the  Constitution  in  relation 
to  the  act  they  performed.  A  State  in  the  American 
Union,  as  distinguished  from  a  Territory,  is  constitu 
tionally  a  part  of  the  Government  to  which  it  owes 
allegiance,  and  the  seceded  States  had  refused  to  be 
parts  of  the  Government,  and  had  forsworn  their 
allegiance.  By  the  Constitution,  the  United  States, 
in  cases  of  "  domestic  violence  "  in  a  State,  is  to  in 
terfere,  "  on  application  of  the  Legislature,  or  of  the 
Executive  when  the  Legislature  cannot  be  convened." 
But  in  this  case  legislatures,  executives,  conventions 
of  the  people,  were  all  violators  of  the  domestic 
peace,  and  of  course  made  no  application  for  interfer 
ence.  By  the  Constitution,  Congress  is  empowered  to 
suppress  insurrections ;  but  this  might  be  supposed 
to  mean  insurrections  like  Shays's  Rebellion  in  Mas 
sachusetts  and  the  Whiskey  Insurrection  in  Pennsyl 
vania,  and  not  to  cover  the  action  of  States  seceding 
from  the  Congress  which  is  thus  empowered.  The 
secedcrs,  therefore,  felt  somewhat  as  did  the  abscond 
ing  James  II.  when  he  flung  the  Great  Seal  into  the 
Thames,  and  thought  he  had  stopped  the  machinery 
of  the  English  government. 

Mr.  Buchanan,  then  President  of  the  United  States, 
admitted   at   once   that   the   Secessionists  had   done 


266    THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

their  work  in  such  a  way  that,  though  they  had  done 
wrong,  the  Government  was  powerless  to  compel  them 
to  do  right.  And  here  the  matter  should  have  rested, 
if  the  Government  established  by  the  Constitution  was 
such  a  government  as  Mr.  Johnson's  supporters  now 
declare  it  to  be.  If  it  is  impotent  to  prescribe  terms 
of  peace  in  relation  to  insurgent  States,  it  is  certainly 
impotent  to  make  war  on  insurgent  States.  If  in 
surgent  States  recover  their  former  constitutional 
rights  in  laying  down  their  arms,  then  there  was  no 
criminality  in  their  taking  them  up ;  and  if  there  was 
no  criminality  in  their  taking  them  up,  then  the 
United  States  was  criminal  in  the  war  by  whicli  they 
were  forced  to  lay  them  down.  On  this  theory  we 
have  a  Government  incompetent  to  legislate  for  insur 
gent  States,  because  lacking  their  representatives, 
waging  against  them  a  cruel  and  unjust  war.  And 
this  is  the  real  theory  of  the  defeated  Rebels  and 
Copperheads  who  formed  the  great  mass  of  the  dele 
gates  to  the  Johnson  Convention.  Should  they  get 
into  power,  they  would  feel  themselves  logically  justi 
fied  in  annulling,  not  only  all  the  acts  of  the  "  Rump 
Congress "  since  they  submitted,  but  all  the  acts  of 
the  Rump  Congresses  during  the  time  they  had  a 
Confederate  Congress  of  their  own.  They  may  deny 
that  this  is  their  intention  ;  but  what  intention  to 
forego  the  exercise  of  an  assumed  right,  held  by 
those  who  are  out  of  power,  can  be  supposed  capable 
of  limiting  their  action  when  they  are  in  ? 

But  if  the  United  States  is  a  Government  having 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.     267 

legitimate  rights  of  sovereignty  conferred  upon  it  by 
the  people  of  all  the  States,  and  if,  consequently,  the 
attempted  secession  of  the  people  of  one  or  more 
States  only  makes  them  criminals,  without  impairing 
the  sovereignty  of  the  United  States,  then  the  Govern 
ment,  with  all  its  powers,  remains  with  the  represent 
atives  of  the  loyal  people.  By  the  very  nature  of 
government  as  government,  the  rights  and  privileges 
guaranteed  to  citizens  are  guaranteed  to  loyal  citi 
zens  ;  the  rights  and  privileges  guaranteed  to  States 
are  guaranteed  to  loyal  States  ;  and  loyal  citizens 
and  loyal  States  are  not  such  as  profess  a  willingness 
to  be  loyal  after  having  been  utterly  worsted  in  an 
enterprise  of  gigantic  disloyalty.  The  organic  unity 
and  continuity  of  the  Government  would  be  broken  by 
the  return  of  disloyal  citizens  and  Rebel  States  with 
out  their  going  through  the  process  of  being  restored 
by  the  action  of  the  Government  they  had  attempted 
to  subvert ;  and  the  power  to  restore  carries  with  it 
the  power  to  decide  on  the  terms  of  restoration. 
And  when  we  speak  of  the  Government,  we  are  not 
courtly  enough  to  mean  by  the  expression  simply  its 
executive  branch.  The  question  of  admitting  and 
implicitly  of  restoring  States,  and  of  deciding  whether 
or  not  States  have  a  republican  form  of  government, 
are  matters  left  by  the  Constitution  to  the  discretion 
of  Congress.  As  to  the  Rebel  States  now  claiming 
representation,  they  have  succumbed,  thoroughly  ex 
hausted,  in  one  of  the  costliest  and  bloodiest  wars  in 
the  history  of  the  world,  —  a  war  which  tasked  the 


268     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

resources  of  the  United  States  more  than  they  would 
have  been  tasked  by  a  war  with  all  the  great  powers 
of  Europe  combined,  —  a  war  which,  in  1862,  had 
assumed  such  proportions,  that  the  Supreme  Court 
decided  that  it  gave  the  United  States  the  same 
rights  and  privileges  which  the  Government  might 
exercise  in  the  case  of  a  national  and  foreign  war. 
The  inhabitants  of  the  insurgent  States  being  thus 
judicially  declared  public  enemies  as  well  as  Rebels, 
there  would  seem  to  be  no  doubt  at  all  that  the  vic 
torious  close  of  actual  hostilities  could  not  deprive 
the  Government  of  the  power  of  deciding  on  the  terms 
of  peace  with  public  enemies.  The  Government  of 
the  United  States  found  the  insurgent  States  thor 
oughly  revolutionized  and  disorganized,  with  no  State 
governments  which  could  be  recognized  without  rec 
ognizing  the  validity  of  treason,  and  without  the 
power  or  right  to  take  even  the  initial  steps  for  State 
reorganization.  They  were  practically  out  of  the 
Union  as  States  ;  their  State  governments  had  lapsed  ; 
their  population  was  composed  of  Rebels  and  public 
enemies,  by  the  decision  of  the  Supreme  Court.  Un 
der  such  circumstances,  how  the  commander-in-chief, 
under  Congress,  of  the  forces  of  the  United  States 
could  re-create  these  defunct  States,  and  make  it 
mandatory  on  Congress  to  receive  their  delegates, 
has  always  appeared  to  us  one  of  those  mysteries 
of  unreason  which  require  faculties  either  above  or 
below  humanity  to  accept.  In  addition  to  this  fun 
damental  objection,  there  was  the  further  one,  that 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.      269 

almost  all  of  the  delegates  were  Rebels  presidentially 
pardoned  into  "loyal  men,"  were  elected  with  the 
idea  cf  forcing  Congress  to  repeal  the  test  oath,  and 
were  incapacitated  to  be  legislators  even  if  they  had 
been  sent  from  loyal  States.  The  few  who  were 
loyal  men  in  the  sense  that  they  had  not  served  the 
Rebel  government,  were  still  palpably  elected  by 
constituents  who  had  ;  and  the  character  of  the  con 
stituency  is  as  legitimate  a  subject  of  Congressional 
inquiry  as  the  character  of  the  representative. 

It  not  being  true,  then,  that  the  twenty-two  hun 
dred  thousand  loyal  voters  who  placed  Mr.  Johnson 
in  office,  and  whom  he  betrayed,  have  no  means  by 
their  representatives  in  Congress  to  exert  a  control 
ling  power  in  the  reconstruction  of  the  Rebel  com 
munities,  the  question  comes  up  as  to  the  conditions 
which  Congress  has  imposed.  It  always  appeared  to 
us  that  the  true  measure  of  conciliation,  of  security, 
of  mercy,  of  justice,  was  one  which  would  combine 
the  principle  of  universal  amnesty,  or  an  amnestj" 
nearly  universal,  with  that  of  universal,  or  at  least 
of  impartial  suffrage.  In  regard  to  amnesty,  the 
amendment  to  the  Constitution  which  Congress  has 
passed  disqualifies  no  Rebels  from  voting,  and  only 
disqualifies  them  from  holding  office  when  they  have 
happened  to  add  perjury  to  treason.  In  regard  to 
suffrage,  it  makes  it  for  the  political  interest  of  the 
South  to  be  just  to  its  colored  citizens,  by  basing 
representation  on  voters,  and  not  on  population,  and 
thus  places  the  indulgence  of  class  prejudices  and 


270      THE  PRESIDENT  AND   HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

hatreds  under  the  penalty  of  a  corresponding  loss  of 
political  power  in  the  Electoral  College  and  the  Na 
tional  House  of  Representatives.  If  the  Rebel  States 
should  be  restored  without  this  amendment  becoming 
a  part  of  the  Constitution,  then  the  recent  Slave 
States  will  have  thirty  Presidential  Electors  and 
thirty  members  of  the  House  of  Representatives  in 
virtue  of  a  population  they  disfranchise,  and  the  vote 
of  a  Rebel  white  in  South  Carolina  will  carry  with  it 
more  than  double  the  power  of  a  loyal  white  in  Mas 
sachusetts  or  Ohio.  The  only  ground  on  which  this 
disparity  can  be  defended  is,  that  as  u  one  Southerner 
is  more  than  a  match  for  two  Yankees,"  he  has  an 
inherent,  continuous,  unconditioned  right  to  have  this 
superiority  recognized  at  the  ballot-box.  Indeed,  the 
injustice  of  this  is  so  monstrous,  that  the  Johnson 
orators  find  it  more  convenient  to  decr}r  all  conditions 
of  representation  than  to  meet  the  incontrovertible 
reasons  for  exacting  the  condition  which  bases  rep 
resentation  on  voters.  Not  to  make  it  a  part  of  the 
Constitution  would  be,  in  Mr.  Shellabarger's  vivid 
illustration,  to  allow  "that  Lee's  vote  should -have 
double  the  elective  power  of  Grant's ;  Semmes's 
double  that  of  Farragut's  ;  Booth's  —  did  he  live  — 
double  that  of  Lincoln's,  his  victim!" 

It  is  also  to  be  considered  that  these  thirty  votes 
would,  in  almost  all  future  sessions  of  Congress,  de 
cide  the  fate  of  the  most  important  measures.  In 
1862  the  Republicans,  as  Congress  is  now  constituted, 
only  had  a  majority  of  twenty  votes.  In  alliance  with 


THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES.      271 

the  Northern  Democratic  party,  the  South  with  these 
thirty  votes  might  repeal  the  Civil  Rights  Bill,  the 
principle  of  which  is  embodied  in  the  proposed 
amendment.  It  might  assume  the  Rebel  debt,  which 
is  repudiated  in  that  amendment.  It  might  even 
repudiate  the  Federal  debt,  which  is  affirmed  in  that 
amendment.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  look  at  the 
Rebel  debt  as  dead  beyond  all  power  of  resurrection, 
as  to  forget  that  it  amounts,  with  the  valuation  of  the 
emancipated  slaves,  to  some  four  thousand  millions 
of  dollars.  If  the  South  and  its  Northern  Democratic 
allies  should  come  into  power,  there  is  a  strong  prob 
ability  that  a  measure  would  be  brought  in  to  assume 
at  least  a  portion  of  this  debt,  —  say  two  thousand 
millions.  The  Southern  members  would  be  nearly  a 
unit  for  assumption,  and  the  Northern  Democratic 
members  would  certainly  be  exposed  to  the  most 
frightful  temptation  that  legislators  ever  had  to  re 
sist.  Suppose  it  were  necessary  to  buy  fifty  members 
at  a  million  of  dollars  apiece,  that  sum  would  only  be 
two  and  a  half  per  cent  of  the  whole.  Suppose  it 
were  .necessary  to  give  them  ten  millions  apiece,  even 
that  would  only  be  a  deduction  of  twenty-five  per  cent 
from  a  claim  worthless  without  their  votes.  The 
bribery  might  be  conducted  in  such  a  way  as  to  elude 
discovery,  if  not  suspicion,  and  the  measure  would 
certainly  be  trumpeted  all  over  the  North  as  the 
grandest  of  all  acts  of  statesmanlike  "  conciliation," 
binding  the  South  to  the  Union  in  indissoluble  bonds 
of  interest.  The  amendment  renders  the  conversion 


272     THE  PRESIDENT  AND  HIS  ACCOMPLICES. 

of  the  Rebel  debt  into  the  most  enormous  of  all  cor 
ruption  funds  an  impossibility. 

But  the  character  and  necessity  of  the  amendment 
are  too  well  understood  to  need  explanation,  enforce 
ment,  or  defence.  If  it,  or  some  more  stringent  one, 
be  not  adopted,  the  loyal  people  will  be  tricked  out  of 
the  fruits  of  the  war  they  have  waged  at  the  expense 
of  such  unexampled  sacrifices  of  treasure  and  blood. 
It  never  will  be  adopted  unless  it  be  practically  made 
a  condition  of  the  restoration  of  the  Rebel  States ;  and 
for  the  unconditioned  restoration  of  those  States  the 
President,  through  his  most  trusted  supporters,  has 
indicated  his  intention  to  venture  a  coup  d'etat.  This 
threat  has  failed  doubly  of  its  purpose.  The  timid, 
whom  it  was  expected  to  frighten,  it  has  simply  scared 
into  the  reception  of  the  idea  that  the  only  way  to  es 
cape  civil  war  is  by  the  election  of  over  a  hundred  and 
twenty  Republican  Representatives  to  the  Fortieth 
Congress.  The  courageous,  whom  it  was  intended  to 
defy,  it  has  only  exasperated  into  more  strenuous 
efforts  against  the  insolent  renegade  who  had  the 
audacity  to  make  it.  Everywhere  in  the  loyal  States 
there  is  an  uprising  of  the  people  only  paralleled  by 
the  grand  uprising  of  1861.  The  President's  plan  of 
reconstruction  having  passed  from  a  policy  into  a  con 
spiracy,  his  chief  supporters  are  now  not  so  much  his 
partisans  as  his  accomplices ;  and  against  him  and  his 
accomplices  the  people  will  this  autumn  indignantly 
record  the  most  overwhelming  of  verdicts. 

November,  18G6. 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT   WASHINGTON. 

THE  people  of  the  United  States  now  have  the 
mortification  of  standing  before  the  world  in  the 
attitude  of  a  swindled  democracy.  Their  collective 
will  is  crossed  by  the  will  of  one  individual,  whose 
only  title  to  such  autocracy  is  in  the  fact  that  he 
has  cheated  and  betrayed  those  who  elected  him. 
There  might  be  some  little  compensation  for  this 
outrage,  if  the  man  himself  possessed  any  of  those 
commanding  qualities  of  mind  and  disposition  which 
ordinarily  distinguish  usurpers;  but  it  is  the  peculiar 
ity  of  Mr.  Johnson  that  the  indignation  excited  by 
his  claims  is  only  equalled  by  the  contempt  excited 
by  his  character.  He  is  despised  even  by  those  he 
benefits,  and  his  nominal  supporters  feel  ashamed 
of  the  trickster  and  apostate,  while  condescending  to 
reap  the  advantages  of  his  faithlessness.  No  party 
in  the  South  or  in  the  North  thinks  of  selecting  him 
as  its  candidate ;  for  the  vices  and  weaknesses  which 
make  an  excellent  accomplice  and  tool  are  not  those 
which  any  party  would  consider  desirable  in  a  leader. 
Whatever  office-seekers,  partisans,  traitors,  and  pub 
lic  enemies  may  find  in  Mr.  Johnson,  it  is  certain 
that  they  find  in  him  nothing  to  respect.  He  is 
cursed  with  that  form  of  moral  disease  which  some- 

18 


274         THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

times  renders  a  man  ridiculous,  sometimes  infamous, 
but  which  never  renders  him  respectable  ;  namely, 
vanity  of  will.  Other  men  may  be  vain  of  their 
talents  and  accomplishments,  but  he  is  vain  of  the 
personal  pronoun  itself,  utterly  regardless  of  what 
it  covers  and  includes.  Reason,  conscience,  under 
standing,  have  no  impersonality  to  him.  When  he 
uses  the  words,  he  uses  them  as  synonyms  of  his 
determinations,  or  as  decorative  terms  into  which 
it  pleases  him  to  translate  the  rough  vernacular  of 
his  wilfulness  and  caprices.  The  "  Constitution," 
also,  a  word  constantly  profaned  by  his  lips,  is 
not  so  much,  as  he  uses  it,  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  as  the  moral  and  mental  constitution 
of  Andrew  Johnson,  which,  in  his  view,  is  the  one 
primary  fact  to  which  all  other  facts  must  be  subor 
dinate.  His  gross  inconsistencies  of  opinion  and 
policy,  his  shameless  betrayal  of  his  party,  his  in 
capacity  to  hold  himself  to  his  word,  his  hatred  of 
a  cause  the  moment  its  defenders  cease  to  flatter 
him,  his  habit  of  administering  laws  he  has  vetoed, 
on  the  principle  that  they  do  not  mean  what  he 
vetoed  them  for  meaning,  his  delight  in  little  tricks 
of  low  cunning,  — in  short,  all  the  immoral  and  un 
reasonable  acts  of  his  administration  have  their  cen 
tral  source  in  a  passionate  sense  of  self-importance, 
inflaming  a  mind  of  extremely  limited  capacity. 

Such  a  person,  whose  mere  presence  in  the  ex 
ecutive  chair  of  a  constitutional  country  is  itself  "  a 
high  crime  and  misdemeanor,"  is  of  course  the  natu- 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON.          275 

ral  prey  of  demagogues,  and  he  now  appears  to  be 
surrounded  by  demagogues  of  the  most  desperate 
class.  His  advisers  are  conspirators,  and  they  have 
so  wrought  on  his  vulgar  and  malignant  nature  that 
the  question  of  his  impeachment  has  now  come  to 
be  merged  in  the  more  momentous  question  whether 
he  will  submit  to  be  impeached.  Constitutionally, 
there  is  no  limit  to  the  power  of  Congress  in  this 
respect  but  that  which  Congress  may  itself  impose. 
The  power  is  plain,  and  there  can  be  no  revision  of 
the  judgment  of  the  Senate  by  any  other  power  in 
the  Government.  But  Mr.  Johnson  thinks,  or  says 
he  thinks,  that  Congress  itself,  as  at  present  consti 
tuted,  is  unconstitutional.  He  believes,  or  says  lie 
believes,  that  the  defeated  Rebel  States  whose  repre 
sentatives  Congress  now  excludes  are  as  much  States 
in  the  Union,  and  as  much  entitled  to  representation, 
as  New  York  or  Ohio.  As  he  specially  represents 
the  defeated  Rebel  States,  it  is  hardly  to  be  supposed 
that  he  will  consent  to  be  punished  for  crimes  com 
mitted  in  their  behalf  by  a  Congress  from  which 
their  representatives  are  excluded ;  and  it  is  also  to 
be  presumed  that  the  measures  he  is  now  taking 
to  obstruct  the  operation  of  the  laws  of  Congress 
relating  to  reconstruction  are  but  preliminary  to  a 
design  to  resist  Congress  itself. 

The  madness  of  such  a  scheme  leads  judicious 
people  to  disbelieve  in  its  possibility ;  but  in  respect 
to  Mr.  Johnson  it  has  been  found  that  the  only  way 
to  prevent  the  occurrence  of  mischief  is  to  diffuse 


276         THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

extensively  among  the  people  the  suspicion  that  it 
is  meditated.  Judicious  and  dispassionate  persons 
are  often  poor  judges  of  what  men  of  fierce  passions 
arid  distempered  minds  will  do ;  for  they  uncon 
sciously  attribute  to  such  men  some  of  their  own 
ideas  of  honesty,  propriety,  and  regard  for  the  public 
welfare.  The  legislators  whom  Louis  Napoleon  out 
witted  were  overthrown,  because,  bad  as  their  opinion 
of  him  was,  it  was  not  so  bad  as  events  proved  it 
ought  to  have  been.  In  the  case  of  Mr.  Johnson, 
there  is  riot  the  same  excuse  for  misconception,  since 
his  cunning  is  utterly  divorced  from  sagacity,  and 
he  has  not  the  intelligence  to  conceal  what  his  im 
pulses  prompt  him  to  attempt.  The  kind  of  man 
he  is  would  seem  to  be  obvious  to  the  most  superficial 
observer ;  the  natural  inference  is,  therefore,  that  he 
will  act  after  his  kind ;  but  this  is  an  inference  which 
dispassionate  statesmen  have  hesitated  fully  to  draw. 
They  have  been  continually  surprised  at  acts  which 
they  should  have  foreseen.  They  were  surprised 
that,  during  the  months  he  was  left  to  his  own  de 
vices  and  to  the  counsels  of  Southern  politicians, 
he  matured  his  policy  of  reconstruction.  They  were 
surprised  that  he  would  not  abandon  his  policy  rather 
than  break  with  the  Republican  party.  They  were 
surprised  when  they  learned  that  he  meditated  a 
coup  d^tat  on  the  assembling  of  the  Fortieth  Con 
gress.  They  were  surprised  when  they  found  that 
no  law  could  be  made  which  would  bind  him  accord 
ing  to  its  intent.  They  were  surprised  when,  as  soon 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON.          277 

as  Congress  adjourned,  he  began  to  take  measures 
which  can  have  no  other  intelligible  purpose  than 
that  of  making  him  master  of  Congress  when  it 
reassembles.  And  to  crown  all,  though  it  has  been 
apparent  since  February,  1866,  that  he  was  the  enemy 
of  the  country,  they  have  still  had  technical  rea- 
tsons  for  retaining  him  as  the  proper  executive  of  its 
laws. 

It  would  then  seem  that,  in  dealing  with  such  a 
man  as  Andrew  Johnson,  it  is  the  part  of  wisdom 
to  suspect  the  worst.  Without  any  special  knowledge 
of  the  treasonable  intrigue  now  going  on  in  Washing 
ton,  it  is  still  possible  to  fathom  the  President's 
designs,  and  to  understand  the  resources  on  which 
he  relies.  In  the  first  place,  his  conceit  makes  him 
believe  that  he  is  the  first  man  in  the  nation,  and 
that  he  is  not  only  adored  at  the  South,  but  popu 
lar  at  the  North.  The  slightest  sign  of  reaction  in 
Northern  and  Western  elections  he  considers  a  testi 
mony  to  his  individual  merit,  and  an  indorsement 
of  his  policy.  In  case  he  refuses  to  recognize  the 
present  Congress,  turns  its  members  by  military 
power  out  of  their  seats,  and  appeals  for  support  to 
the  white  population  of  the  Rebel  as  well  as  Loyal 
States,  he  will  count  on  being  sustained  by  the 
nation.  The  Democratic  party  agrees  with  him  as 
far  as  regards  the  constitutionality  of  the  laws  which 
he  will,  in  the  name  of  the  Constitution,  be  compelled 
to  disregard  in  order  to  get  possession  of  the  military 
power  of  the  country ;  and  he  thinks  that  party  will 


278         THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

support  him  in  resuming  those  functions  as  com- 
mander-in-chief  of  which  he  has  been  deprived  by 
a  "  usurping "  Congress.  The  army  and  navy,  with 
all  Republican  officers  removed,  including,  of  course, 
General  Grant  and  Admiral  Farragut,  he  thinks  will 
obey  his  orders.  The  South,  he  supposes,  will  rally 
round  him  to  a  man.  The  thoroughly  Rebel  military 
organization  in  Maryland,  controlled  by  a  Governor 
after  his  own  heart,  will  interpose  obstacles  to  the 
passage  of  troops  from  the  Northern  States  to  Wash 
ington.  The  Democrats  in  those  States  will  do  all 
they  can  to  prevent  troops  from  being  sent.  Before 
there  could  be  any  efficient  military  organization  in 
the  Loyal  States  brought  to  bear  on  his  dictatorship, 
he  expects  to  have  a  Congress  of  "  the  whole  nation  " 
around  him,  of  which  at  least  a  majority  will  be  de 
feated  Rebels  and  Copperheads.  The  whole  thing 
is  to  be  done  in  the  name  of  the  Constitution ;  and 
the  Proclamation  he  has  issued  to  all  officers  of  the 
United  States,  civil  and  military,  telling  them  to  obey 
the  Constitution  (that  is,  Mr.  Johnson),  may  be 
considered  the  first  step  in  the  development  of  the 
scheme. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  such  a  scheme  could  only 
find  hospitable  reception  in  the  head  of  a  spiteful,  in 
flated,  and  unprincipled  egotist,  for  such  an  egotist 
Mr.  Johnson  assuredly  is.  It  is  needless  to  say  that 
it  would  break  down  through  the  refusal  of  General 
Grant  to  give  up  his  command,  and  through  the  re 
fusal  of  the  great  body  of  the  army  to  obey  the  Presi- 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON.          279 

dent ;  for  the  danger  is  not  so  much  the  success  of 
the  attempt  as  the  convulsion  which  the  mere  attempt 
would  occasion.  That  the  danger  is  a  serious  one, 
provided  the  October  and  November  elections  show 
a  considerable  Republican  loss,  is  evident  from  a 
consideration  of  the  President's  position.  He  has 
already  gone  far  enough  in  his  course  to  exasperate 
Congress,  and  unite  its  Republican  members,  con 
servative  and  radical,  in  favor  of  his  impeachment. 
Without  going  over  the  long  list  of  delinquencies  and 
usurpations  which  would  justify  that  measure,  it  is 
sufficient  to  name  the  recent  Proclamation  of  Am 
nesty  as  an  act  which  promises  to  secure  it.  That 
Proclamation  is  a  plain  violation  of  the  Constitution 
as  the  Constitution  is  understood  by  Congress  ;  and 
it  is  upon  the  Congressional  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  that,  in  the  matter  of  impeachment,  the 
President  must  stand  or  fall.  Congress,  by  giving 
the  power  of  granting  amnesty  to  Mr.  Lincoln,  evi 
dently  conceived  that  it  was  not  a  power  given  to  him 
by  the  Constitution;  by  taking  it  away  from  Mr. 
Johnson,  it  as  evidently  conceived  that  it  could  not 
be  exercised  by  him  except  by  usurpation.  In  usurp 
ing  this  power,  Mr.  Johnson  must  have  known  that 
his  act  belonged,  in  the  opinion  of  Congress,  to  the 
class  of  "high  crimes  and  misdemeanors,"  for  the 
commission  of  which  the  Constitution  expressly  pro 
vides  that  Presidents  may  be  impeached ;  and  he 
must  also  have  known  that  Congress,  in  judging  of 
his  infractions  of  the  Constitution,  would  be  bound 


280          THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

neither  by  his  individual  opinion  of  his  constitutional 
powers  nor  by  the  opinion  of  the  Supreme  Court,  but 
was  at  perfect  liberty  to  act  on  its  own  interpretation 
of  his  constitutional  duty.  It  is  not  therefore  to  be 
supposed  that  he  intended  to  limit  his  defiance  of 
Congress  to  the  mere  issuing  of  the  Amnesty  Proc 
lamation,  especially  as  the  principle  on  which  that 
Proclamation  was  issued  would  cover  his  refusal  to 
carry  out  the  whole  Congressional  plan  of  reconstruc 
tion.  His  conviction  or  assertion  that  Congress  has 
no  right  to  withhold  from  him  the  power  to  pardon 
defeated  rebels  and  public  enemies  by  the  wholesale, 
is  certainly  not  greater  or  more  emphatic  than  his 
conviction  or  assertion  that,  in  its  plan  of  reconstruc 
tion,  Congress  has  granted  to  subordinates  powers 
which  constitutionally  belong  to  him.  If  he  can  exalt 
his  will  over  Congress  in  the  one  case,  there  is  no 
reason  why  he  should  not  do  it  in  the  other. 

Indeed,  in  the  Proclamation  of  Amnesty,  Mr.  John 
son  practically  claims  that  his  power  to  grant  pardons 
extends  to  a  dispensing  power  over  the  laws.  But  it 
is  evident  that  the  Constitution,  in  giving  the  Presi 
dent  the  power  to  pardon  criminals,  does  not  give  him 
the  power  to  dispense  with  the  laws  against  crime. 
At  one  period  Mr.  Johnson  seems  to  have  done  this 
in  respect  to  the  crime  of  counterfeiting,  by  his  re 
peated  pardons  extended  to  convicted  counterfeiters. 
Still,  there  is  a  broad  line  of  distinction  between  the 
abuse  of  this  power  to  pardon  criminals  after  convic 
tion,  and  the  assumption  of  power  to  restore  to  whole 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON.          281 

classes  of  traitors  and  public  enemies  their  forfeited 
rights  of  citizenship.  By  the  pardon  of  murderers 
and  counterfeiters,  the  President  cannot  much  increase 
the  number  of  his  political  supporters ;  by  the  pardon 
of  traitors  and  public  enemies,  he  may  build  up  a 
party  to  support  him  in  his  struggle  against  the  legis 
lative  department  of  the  Government.  The  reasons 
which  have  induced  Mr.  Johnson  to  dispense  with  the 
laws  against  treason  are  political  reasons,  and  bear 
no  relation  to  his  prerogative  of  mercy.  Nobody  pre 
tends  tli at  he  pardoned  counterfeiters  because  they 
were  his  political  partisans  ;  everybody  knows  he  par 
dons  traitors  and  public  enemies  in  order  to  gain 
their  influence  and  votes.  A  public  enemy  himself, 
and  leagued  with  public  enemies,  he  has  the  impu 
dence  to  claim  that  he  is  constitutionally  capable  of 
perverting  his  power  to  pardon  into  a  power  to  gain 
political  support  in  his  schemes  against  the  loyal 
nation. 

But  it  is  not  probable  that  the  President  will  limit 
his  usurpations  to  a  measure  whose  chief  significance 
consists  in  its  preliminary  character.  Before  Con 
gress  meets  in  November,  he  will  doubtless  have 
followed  it  up  by  others  which  will  make  his  impeach 
ment  a  matter  of  certainty.  The  only  method  of  pre 
venting  him  from  resisting  impeachment  by  force,  is 
an  awakening  of  the  people  to  the  fact  that  the  final 
battle  against  reviving  rebellion  is  yet  to  be  fought  at 
the  polls.  Any  apathy  or  divisions  among  Republi 
cans  in  the  State  elections  in  October  and  November, 


282         THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

resulting  in  a  decrease  of  their  vote,  will  embolden 
Mr.  Johnson  to  venture  his  meditated  coup  d'etat. 
He  never  will  submit  to  be  impeached  and  removed 
from  office  unless  Congress  is  sustained  by  a  majority 
of  the  people  so  great  as  to  frighten  him  into  submis 
sion.  Elated  by  a  little  victory,  he  can  only  be  de 
pressed  by  a  ruinous  defeat ;  and  such  a  defeat  it  is 
the  solemn  duty  of  the  people  to  prepare  for  him. 
Even  into  his  conceited  brain  must  be  driven  the 
idea  that  his  contemplated  enterprise  is  hopeless,  and 
that,  in  attempting  to  commit  the  greatest  of  politi 
cal  crimes,  he  would  succeed  only  in  committing  the 
most  enormous  of  political  blunders. 

Still,  it  is  not  to  be  concealed  that  there  are  cir 
cumstances  in  the  present  political  condition  of  the 
country  which  may  give  the  President  just  that  de 
gree  of  apparent  popular  support  which  is  all  he 
needs  to  stimulate  him  into  open  rebellion  against 
the  laws.  It  is,  of  course,  his  duty  to  recognize  the 
people  of  the  United  States  in  their  representatives 
in  the  Fortieth  Congress ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  it 
is  the  character  of  his  mind  to  regard  the  people  as 
multiplied  duplicates  of  himself,  and  a  mob  yelling 
for  "  Andy  "  under  his  windows  is  to  him  more  rep 
resentative  of  the  people  than  the  delegates  of  twenty 
States.  In  the  autumn  elections  only  two  Representa 
tives  to  Congress  will  be  chosen  ;  the  political  strife 
will  relate  generally  to  local  questions  and  candidates  ; 
and  it  is  to  be  feared  that  the  Republicans  will  not  be 
sufficiently  alive  to  the  fact,  that  divisions  on  local 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON.          283 

questions  and  candidates  will  be  considered  at  Wash 
ington  as  significant  of  a  change  in  the  public  mind 
on  the  great  national  question  which  it  is  the  business 
of  the  Fortieth  Congress  to  settle.  That  Congress 
needs  the  moral  support  of  a  great  Republican  vote 
now,  and  will  obtain  it  provided  the  people  are  roused 
to  a  conviction  of  its  necessity.  But  a  large  and  in 
fluential  portion  of  the  Republican  party  is  composed 
of  business  men,  whose  occupations  disconnect  them 
from  politics  except  in  important  exigencies,  and  who 
can  with  difficulty  be  made  to  believe  that  politics  is 
a  part  of  their  business,  as  long  as  the  safety  of  their 
business  is  not  threatened  by  civil  disorders.  They 
think  the  reconstruction  question  is  practically  set 
tled  ;  and  when  you  speak  to  them  of  plots  such  as 
are  now  hatching  in  Washington,  and  which  seem  as 
preposterous  as  the  story  of  a  sensational  novel,  their 
incredulity  confirms  them  in  the  notion  that  it  is  safe 
to  allow  things  to  take  their  course.  Their  very  good 
sense  makes  them  blind  to  the  designs  of  such  a 
Bobadil-Cromwell  as  Andrew  Johnson.  The  great 
body  of  the  Republican  party,  indeed,  shows  at  pres 
ent  a  little  of  the  exhaustion  which  is  apt  to  follow 
a  series  of  victories,  and  exhibits  altogether  too  much 
of  the  confidence  which  so  often  attends  an  incom- 
pleted  triumph. 

The  Democratic  party,  on  the  contrary,  is  all  alive, 
and  is  preparing  for  one  last  desperate  attempt  to 
recover  its  old  position  in  the  nation.  Its  leaders 
fear  that,  if  the  Congressional  plan  of  reconstruction 


284         THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

be  carried  out,  it  will  result  in  republicanizing  the 
Southern  States.  This  would  be  the  political  extinc 
tion^  of  their  party.  In  fighting  against  that  plan, 
they  are,  therefore,  fighting  for  life,  and  are  accord- 
ingly  more  than  usually  profligate  in  the  character  of 
the  stimulants  they  address  to  whatever  meanness, 
baseness,  dishonesty,  lawlessness,  and  ignorance  there 
may  be  in  the  nation.  Taxation  presses  hard  on  the 
people,  and  they  have  not  hesitated  to  propose  repu 
diation  of  the  public  debt  as  the  means  of  relief.  The 
argument  is  addressed  to  ignorance  and  passion ;  for 
Mirabeau  hit  the  reason  of  the  case  when  he  defined 
repudiation  as  taxation  in  its  most  cruel  and  iniqui 
tous  form.  But  the  method  of  repudiation  which  the 
Democratic  leaders  propose  to  follow  is  of  all  methods 
the  worst  and  most  calamitous.  They  would  make 
the  dollar  a  mere  form  of  expression  by  the  issue  of 
an  additional  billion  or  two  of  greenbacks,  and  then 
"  pay  off  "  the  debt  in  the  currency  they  had  done  all 
they  could  to  render  worthless.  In  other  words,  they 
would  not  only  swindle  the  public  creditor,  but  wreck 
all  values.  A  party  which  advocates  such  a  scheme 
as  this,  to  save  it  from  the  death  it  deserves,  would 
have  no  hesitation  in  risking  a  civil  convulsion  for  the 
same  purpose.  Indeed,  the  reopening  of  the  civil  war 
would  not  produce  half  the  misery  which  would  be 
created  by  the  adoption  of  their  project  to  dilute  the 
currency. 

Now,  if  by  apathy  on  the  part  of  Republicans  and 
audacity  on  the  part  of  Democrats  the  autumn  elec- 


THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON.          285 

tions  result  unfavorably,  it  will  then  be  universally 
seen  how  true  was  Senator  Simmer's  remark  made  in 
January  last,  that  "  Andrew  Johnson,  who  came  to 
supreme  power  by  a  bloody  accident,  has  become  the 
successor  of  Jefferson  Davis  in  the  spirit  by  which  he 
is  governed,  and  in  the  mischief  he  is  inflicting  on  the 
country ; "  that  u  the  President  of  the  Rebellion  is 
revived  in  the  President  of  the  United  States."  What 
this  man  now  proposes  to  do  has  been  impressively 
stated  by  Senator  Thayer  of  Nebraska,  in  a  public 
address  at  Cincinnati.  "  I  declare,"  he  said,  "  upon 
my  responsibility  as  a  Senator  of  the  United  States, 
that  to-day  Andrew  Johnson  meditates  and  designs 
forcible  resistance  to  the  authority  of  Congress.  I 
make  this  statement  deliberately,  having  received  it 
from  an  unquestioned  and  unquestionable  authority." 
It  would  seem  that  this  authority  could  be  none  other 
than  the  authority  of  the  Acting  Secretary  of  War 
and  General  of  the  Army  of  the  United  States,  who, 
reticent  as  he  is,  does  not  pretend  to  withhold  his 
opinion  that  the  country  is  in  imminent  peril,  and  in 
peril  from  the  action  of  the  President.  But  it  is  by 
some  considered  a  sufficient  reply  to  such  statements, 
that,  if  Mr.  Johnson  should  overturn  the  legislative 
department  of  the  Government,  there  would  be  an  up 
rising  of  the  people  which  would  soon  sweep  him  and 
his  supporters  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  This  may 
be  very  true ;  but  we  should  prefer  a  less  Mexican 
manner  of  ascertaining  public  sentiment.  Without 
leaving  their  peaceful  occupations,  the  people  can  do 


286         THE  CONSPIRACY  AT  WASHINGTON. 

I 

by  their  votes  all  that  it  is  proposed  they  shall  do  by 
their  muskets.  It  is  hardly  necessary  that  a  million 
or  half  a  million  of  men  should  go  to  Washington  to 
speak  their  mind  to  Mr.  Johnson,  when  a  ballot-box 
close  at  hand  will  save  them  the  expense  and  trouble. 
It  will,  indeed,  be  infinitely  disgraceful  to  the  nation 
if  Mr.  Johnson  dares  to  put  his  purpose  into  act ;  for 
his  courage  to  violate  his  own  duty  will  come  from 
the  neglect  of  the  people  to  perform  theirs.  Let  the 
great  uprising  of  the  citizens  of  the  Republic  be  at  the 
polls  this  autumn,  and  there  will  be  no  need  of  a  fight 
in  the  winter.  The  House  of  Representatives,  which 
has  the  sole  power  of  impeachment,  will  in  all  prob 
ability  impeach  the  President.  The  Senate,  which 
has  the  sole  power  to  try  impeachments,  will  in  all 
probability  find  him  guilty,  by  the  requisite  two  thirds 
of  its  members,  of  the  charges  preferred  by  the  House. 
And  he  himself,  cowed  by  the  popular  verdict  against 
his  contemplated  crime,  and  hopeless  of  escaping  from 
the  punishment  of  past  delinquencies  by  a  new  act  of 
treason,  will  submit  to  be  removed  from  the  office  he 
has  too  long  been  allowed  to  dishonor. 

November,  1867- 


MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  REPUBLICAN 
TRIUMPH. 

THE  victory  which  the  Republican  party  gained  in 
the  November  election,  after  the  most  fiercely  con 
tested  struggle  recorded  in  our  political  history,  is 
the  crowning  victory  of  the  War  of  the  Rebellion,  and 
its  real  close.  A  war  such  as  raged  in  this  country 
between  April,  1861,  and  April,  1865,  is  ended,  not 
w^hen  the  defeated  party  ceases  to  fight,  but  when  it 
ceases  to  hope.  The  sentiments  and  principles  which 
led  to  the  Rebellion  were  overturned,  not  in  1865,  but 
in  1868.  After  the  exhaustion  of  physical  power, 
which  compelled  the  Rebels  to  lay  down  their  arms, 
came  the  moral  struggle  which  has  resulted  in  com 
pelling  them  to  surrender  their  ideas.  If  these  ideas 
had  been  on  a  level  with  the  civilization  of  the  age, 
or  in  advance  of  it;  if  the  "Lost  Cause"  had  been 
the  cause  of  humanity  and  freedom,  of  reason  and  jus 
tice,  of  good  morals  and  good  sense,  —  such  a  catas 
trophe  would  be  viewed  by  every  right-minded  man  as 
a  great  calamity.  But  the  Rebellion  was  essentially 
a  revolt  of  tyrants  for  the  privilege  to  oppress,  and  of 
bullies  for  the  right  to  domineer.  Its  interpretation 
of  the  Constitution  was  an  ingenious  reversal  of  the 


288  MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OE 

purposes  for  which  the  Constitution  was  declared  to 
be  made,  and  its  doctrine  of  State  Rights  was  a  mere 
cover  for  a  comprehensive  conspiracy  against  the 
rights  of  man.  The  success  of  such  a  "  cause  "  could 
not  have  benefited  even  its  defenders ;  for  the  worst 
government  for  the  permanent  welfare  even  of  the 
governing  classes  is  that  in  which  the  intelligent  sys 
tematically  prey  upon  the  ignorant,  and  the  strong 
mercilessly  trample  on  the  weak.  In  a  large  view, 
the  South  is  better  off  to-day  for  the  military  defeat 
which  dissipated  its  wild  dream  of  insolent  domina 
tion,  and  for  the  political  defeat  which  destroyed  the 
last  hopes  of  its  reviving  passions. 

Those  who  are  accustomed  to  recognize  a  provi 
dence  in  the  direction  of  human  affairs  may  find  in 
the  course  and  conduct  equally  of  this  military  and 
political  struggle  the  strongest  confirmation  of  their 
faith.  The  great  things  that  have  been  done  appear 
to  have  been  done  through  us,  rather  than  by  us. 
During  the  war,  it  seemed  as  if  no  mistakes  could 
hinder  us  from  gaining  victories,  no  reverses  obstruct 
our  steady  advance,  no  conservative  prudence  prevent 
us  from  being  the  audacious  champions  of  radical  ideas. 
The  march  of  events  swept  forward  Government  and 
people  on  its  own  path,  converting  the  distrusted  ab 
straction  of  yesterday  into  the  "  military  necessity  "  of 
to-day  and  the  constitutional  provision  of  to-morrow. 
President,  Congress,  parties,  all  felt  the  propulsion  of 
a  force  more  intelligent  than  individual  sagacity,  and 
mightier  than  associated  opinion.  So  strong  was  the 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH.  289 

stress  on  the  minds  of  Republicans,  that  the  charge 
of  inconsistency,  made  by  such  politicians  as  had  suc 
ceeded  in  secluding  themselves  from  the  heroic  im 
pulse  of  the  time,  not  only  fell  pointless,  but  was 
welcomed  as  an  indication  that  the  men  conducting 
the  war  were  intelligent  enough  to  read  aright  its 
grim  facts  as  they  successively  started  into  view.  The 
result  proved  that  the  very  absence  of  what  is  called 
"a  leading  mind"  indicated  the  presence  of  a  Mind 
compared  with  which  Caesars  and  Napoleons  are  as 
little  as  Soubises  and  Macks. 

What  was  true  of  the  military  is  true  of  the  politi 
cal  contest.  After  the  armed  Rebellion  was  crushed 
by  arms,  and  the  meaner  rebellion  of  intrigue,  bluster, 
and  miscellaneous  assassination  began,  both  parties 
had  reason  to  be  surprised  at  the  issue.  The  Rebels 
found  that  their  profoundest  calculations,  their  most 
unscrupulous  plottings,  their  most  vigorous  action, 
only  led  them  to  a  more  ruinous  defeat.  Their  oppo 
nents  had  almost  equal  reason  for  wonder ;  for  the 
plan  of  reconstruction,  which  they  eventually  passed 
and  repeatedly  sustained  by  more  than  two  thirds  of 
both  Houses  of  Congress,  would  not  have  commanded 
a  majority  in  either  House  at  the  time  the  problem  of 
reconstruction  was  first  presented.  Whether  we  refer 
this  unexpected  and  unpremeditated  result  to  Provi 
dence,  to  the  nature  of  things,  or  to  the  logic  of  events, 
it  still  shows  that  our  forecast  did  little  more  than 
"  make  mouths  at  the  invisible  event."  The  country 
was  not  so  much  ruled  as  overruled. 

19 


290  MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF 

The  form  which  reconstruction  eventually  took  was, 
however,  the  form  which  from  the  first  reason  would 
have  decided  to  be  the  best.     It  offended  strong  preju 
dices  and  roused  bitter  animosities ;  but  it  was  neces 
sary  to  insure  the  safety  and  honor  of  the  nation,  and 
it  was  fitted  to  the  peculiar  facts  and  principles  of  the 
case.     The  question  to  be  decided  referred  primarilv 
to  suffrage.     The  Republicans  were  at  first  inclined 
to  think  it  should  be  conferred  on  the  educated  alone. 
How  would  this  principle  have  applied  to  the  Rebel 
States?     Those  who  could  read  and  write  in  those 
States  were  the  originators  of  the  Rebellion,  and  re 
mained,  after  its  military  overthrow,  in  a  state  of 
sullen  discontent  with  the  Government  by  which  they 
had  been  subdued.     To  give  them  the  suffrage,  and 
deny  it  to  the  great  body  of  the  blacks  and  the  poor 
whites,  would  be  to  put  the  Rebel  States  into  the 
hands  of  the  enemies  of  the  United  States.     This  con 
dition  of  things  would  be  little  improved  by  allowing 
all  whites  to  vote,  and  only  such  blacks  as  should  hap 
pen  to  possess  educational  qualifications.     The  class 
on  whose  loyalty  the  Government  could  depend  would 
be  practically  sacrificed  to  the  classes  whose  loyalty 
the  Government  had  the  best  reason  to  distrust.     It  is 
true  that  the  blacks  were,  as  a  general  tiling,  igno 
rant  ;  but  they  at  least  possessed  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  and  they  were  placed  in  such  a  position 
that  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  would  inevitably 
lead  them  to  take  the  side  of  orderly  government. 
Their  interests,  hopes,  and  passions,  their  very  right 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH.  291 

to  own  themselves,  were  all  bound  up  in  the  success 
of  the  national  cause,  to  which  the  interests,  hopes, 
and  passions  of  the  so-called  educated  classes  were 
opposed.  Besides,  it  might  be  said  that  education  im 
plies  the  recognition  of  sentiments  of  humanity,  ideas 
of  freedom,  duties  of  beneficence,  which  are  on  a  level 
with  the  civilization  of  the  age ;  and  the  blacks  were 
better  educated  in  this  sense  than  the  great  major 
ity  of  their  former  masters,  who  had  notoriously  per 
verted  natural  feeling,  right  reason,  and  true  religion 
in  their  vain  effort  to  defend  an  indefensible  institu 
tion.  Southern  education,  for  many  years  before  the 
Rebellion  broke  out,  had  been  an  education  in  self- 
will,  and  its  most  shining  results  were  men  distin 
guished  for  the  vehemence  of  manner  and  sharpness 
of  intellect  with  which  they  defended  paradoxes  that 
affronted  common  sense,  and  assailed  truths  too  te 
diously  true  to  admit  of  serious  debate.  They  were 
reasoning  beings  without  being  reasonable  ones.  Now, 
the  blacks  could  not  help  being  more  in  sympathy 
with  the  sentiments  and  ideas  of  the  age  than  such 
men  as  these,  for  their  simple,  selfish  instincts  identi 
fied  them  with  advanced  opinions.  And  education,  if 
not  made  the  condition  of  suffrage,  would  be  its  re 
sult.  If  made  its  condition,  the  negroes  would  hold 
no  political  power,  and  common  schools  for  all  classes 
are  only  established  by  those  legislative  assemblies  in 
which  all  classes  are  represented.  At  first,  therefore, 
they  would  vote  right,  because  they  would  vote  as  their 
instincts  taught  them ;  and  by  the  time  that  their  in- 


292  MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF 

stincts  might  not  be  the  measure  of  their  true  inter 
ests,  they  would  be  educated. 

In  the  first  step  made  towards  reconstruction,  that 
called  '"the  President's  Plan,"  no  heed  was  paid  to 
these  considerations.  The  negroes  were  practically 
delivered  over  to  the  tender  mercies  of  their  former 
masters,  and  the  political  power  of  the  Rebel  States 
was  put  into  Rebel  hands.  Profligate  as  this  scheme 
really  was,  it  had  sufficient  plausibility  to  deceive 
many  honest  minds,  and  at  one  period  there  was  im 
minent  danger  of  its  adoption.  The  reaction  conse 
quent  on  a  long  conflict,  the  desire  of  the  people  for 
a  speedy  settlement  of  the  questions  growing  out  of 
the  war,  the  natural  indisposition  of  the  Republican 
leaders  to  quarrel  with  the  President,  the  fear  to  face 
resolutely  the  question  of  negro  suffrage,  the  seeming 
apathy  or  paralysis  of  the  great  body  of  Republican 
voters,  —  all  seemed  to  point  to  a  settlement  which 
would  be  a  surrender,  and  by  which  the  supporters  of 
the  war  would  be  swindled  out  of  its  fair  and  legiti 
mate  results.  Fortunately,  however,  the  great  enemy 
of  the  President's  plan  was  the  President.  His  vul 
garity  undid  the  work  which  his  cunning  had  planned. 
The  force  which  impelled  the  Republican  party  to 
overturn  Mr.  Johnson's  policy  was  derived  from  Mr. 
Johnson  himself.  It  is  needless  here  to  recapitulate 
the  mistakes  by  which  he  succeeded  in  concentrating 
Northern  opinion,  and  making  his  opponents  irresisti 
ble.  The  Republicans  owe  to  him  a  debt  of  gratitude 
they  can  never  pay ;  for  the  peculiar  manner  in  which 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH.  293 

he  schemed  to  split  them  into  factions  made  them  a 
unit.  The  small,  intelligent,  and  unscrupulous  clique 
of  politicians  known  as  "  the  President's  friends  "  sor 
rowfully  admit  that  Mr.  Johnson's  policy  was  a  mag 
nificent  political  game,  which  must  have  succeeded 
had  it  not  been  for  the  bad  playing  of  Mr.  Johnson. 
If  the  executive  department  of  the  Government  lost 
the  respect  of  all  parties  during  his  administration,  it 
was  due  to  the  fact  that  the  President  confounded  the 
office  with  his  personality.  Nobody  could  respect  the 
officer,  and  yet  the  officer  persistently  identified  him 
self  with  the  office. 

After  Mr.  Johnson  had  broken  with  Congress,  he 
became  a  President  in  search  of  a  party.  He  sought 
it  everywhere,  and  particularly  at  the  South.  At  the 
North  he  could  get  politicians  enough,  but  he  could 
get  no  representative  politicians, —  no  politicians  who 
had  "  a  following."  At  the  South  he  obtained  the 
support  of  the  great  body  of  the  Rebels,  but  they  were 
without  any  political  power.  They  could  speak  for 
him,  mob  for  him,  kill  negroes  for  him,  but  they  could 
not  vote  for  him.  Believing,  however,  in  the  certainty 
of  his  eventual  success,  they  repudiated,  with  a  great 
display  of  indignant  eloquence,  the  first  "  Congres 
sional  Plan  "  of  reconstruction,  which  merely  contem 
plated  the  identification  of  their  political  interests  with 
the  enfranchisement  of  the  colored  race,  and  denied 
them  the  privilege  of  counting,  in  the  basis  of  repre 
sentation,  four  millions  of  people  to  whom  they  re 
fused  political  rights.  Certainly  no  conquerors  ever 


294  MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF 

before  proposed  such  mild  terms  to  the  vanquished ; 
and  yet  the  terms  were  rejected  with  a  fury  of  con 
tempt  such  as  would  have  misbecome  a  triumphant 
faction,  mad  with  the  elation  both  of  military  and 
political  success.  The  ludicrous  insolence  of  this 
course  ruined  the  last  prospect  these  men  had  of  re 
building  Southern  society  on  its  old  foundations.  The 
plan  of  reconstruction  which  has  recently  triumphed 
at  the  polls  was  the  necessary  result  of  their  folly  and 
arrogance.  The  reorganization  of  the  Southern  States 
on  the  comprehensive  principle  of  equality  of  rights 
became  possible  only  through  the  madness  of  its  ad 
versaries.  Congress  and  the  people  repeatedly  hesi 
tated  ;  but  in  every  moment  of  hesitation  they  were 
pushed  forward  by  some  new  instance  of  Mr.  John 
son's  brutality  of  speech,  or  by  some  fresh  examples 
of  Southern  proclivity  to  murder. 

As  it  regards  the  right  of  the  Government  of  the 
United  States  to  dictate  conditions  of  reconstruction, 
it  must  be  remembered  that  the  difference  between 
the  President's  Plan  and  the  Congressional  Plan  was 
not,  in  this  respect,  a  difference  in  principle  ;  and  that 
the  position  held  by  the  Democratic  party  —  that  the 
Rebellion  was  a  rebellion  of  individuals,  and  not  of 
States  —  equally  condemns  both.  This  position,  how 
ever,  can  only  be  maintained  by  the  denial  of  the  most 
obvious  facts.  The  enormous  sacrifices  of  blood  and 
treasure  in  putting  down  the  Rebellion  were  made 
necessary  by  the  circumstance  that  it  was  a  rebellion 
of  States.  Had  it  been  merely  an  insurrection  of  in- 


THE  REPUBLICAN   TRIUMPH.  295 

dividuals,  it  would  have  been  an  insurrection  against 
State  governments  as  well  as  against  the  Government 
of  the  United  States,  We  had,  both  before  the  war 
and  during  its  continuance,  examples  of  such  insur 
rections.  The  Whiskey  Insurrection  in  Pennsylvania, 
and  Shays's  Rebellion  in  Massachusetts,  were  risings 
of  individuals  against  the  laws ;  but  nobody  believes 
that  Pennsylvania  and  Massachusetts  lost  any  State 
rights  by  those  disturbances.  In  Kentucky  and  Mis 
souri,  during  the  recent  war,  there  was  a  tenfold  more 
terrible  rebellion  of  individuals  against  the  United 
States  Government ;  but  nobody  pretends  that  Missouri 
and  Kentucky  forfeited  any  State  rights  by  this  crime 
of  their  individual  citizens.  In  all  these  cases,  the  gov 
ernments  of  the  States  remained  in  loyal  hands.  But 
the  peculiarity  of  our  war  against  the  Confederate  States 
consisted  in  the  fact  that  all  the  State  governments  were 
voted  by  the  people  into  Rebel  hands.  The  result  was, 
that  the  supreme  powers  of  taxation  and  conscription, 
placing  every  man  and  every  dollar  at  the  service  of 
the  Confederate  States,  were  lodged  in  a  revolutionary 
government,  and  the  cost  of  suppressing  the  Rebellion 
was  increased  at  least  fourfold  by  this  fact.  After 
losing  two  hundred  and  fifty  thousand  men,  and  two 
billions  and  a  half  of  dollars,  —  more  than  would  have 
been  necessary  to  crush  a  rebellion  of  individual  in 
surgents,  —  we  are  told  that  the  States  never  rebelled  ; 
that  the  loyal  but  bodiless  souls  of  these  communities 
still  existed,  whilst  certain  Rebel  "  individuals  "  exer 
cised  their  supreme  powers ;  and  that,  the  moment 


296  MORAL   SIGNIFICANCE  OF 

these  Rebel  individuals  succumbed,  the  bodiless  souls 
instantly  became  embodied  and  continued  loyal  in  the 
Rebel  individuals  aforesaid  !  Out  of  Bedlam  no  such 
argument  was  ever  propounded  before. 

In  truth,  there  was  no  possibility  that  the  Rebel 
States  could  "  resume  their  practical  relations  "  with 
the  United  States  except  by  the  intervention  of  the 
United  States  in  their  internal  affairs.  Though  the 
plan  of  reconstruction  eventually  adopted  is  called 
the  "  Congressional  Plan,"  it  was  really  the  plan  of 
the  Government  of  the  country.  In  our  system,  a 
mere  majority  of  Congress  is  impotent,  provided  the 
President,  however  "  accidental  "  he  may  be,  however 
mean,  base,  false,  and  traitorous  he  may  be,  nullifies 
its  legislation  by  his  vetoes ;  but  Congress  becomes 
constitutionally  the  governing  power  in  the  nation, 
when  its  policy  is  supported  by  two  thirds  of  the 
Representatives  of  the  people  in  the  House,  and  two 
thirds  of  the  Representatives  of  the  States  in  the 
Senate.  President  Johnson  has  pushed  to  the  ex 
treme  the  powers  granted  to  the  executive  by  the 
Constitution;  and  if  he  has  failed  in  carrying  his 
policy  it  has  been  through  no  encroachments  of  the 
legislature  on  his  constitutional  rights.  Passed  over 
his  vetoes,  lie  was  bound  to  consider  the  reconstruc 
tion  laws  as  the  acts  of  the  Government.  It  is  noto 
rious  that  he  has  systematically  attempted  to  nullify 
the  operation  of  the  laws  which,  by  the  Constitution, 
it  was  his  simple  duty  to  execute. 

It   was   almost   inevitable,   however,  that,  in   the 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH.  297 

measures  by  which  Congress  attempted  to  make  Mr. 
Johnson  perform  his  duties,  it  should  commit  errors 
of  that  kind  which  tell  against  the  popularity  of  a 
party,  if  not  against  its  patriotism  and  intelligence. 
In  spite  of  executive  opposition  Congress  had  suc 
ceeded  in  getting  new  State  governments  organized 
at  the  South,  and  the  representatives  of  the  legal 
people  of  those  States  were  in  the  Senate  and  House 
of  Representatives.  Mr.  Johnson  and  the  Democratic 
party  pronounced  these  reconstructed  State  govern 
ments  to  be  utterly  without  validity,  though  their 
Representatives  formed  part  of  the  Congress  of  the 
United  States,  and  though  Congress  has  by  the  Con 
stitution  the  exclusive  right  of  judging  of  the  qualifi 
cations  of  its  own  members,  and,  by  the  decision  of 
the  Supreme  Court,  has  the  exclusive  right  of  judging 
of  the  validity  of  State  governments.  Whatever  popu 
larity,  therefore,  the  Republicans  may  have  lost  by 
their  reconstruction  policy,  it  was  more  than  offset 
by  the  blunder  made  by  their  opponents  in  proposing 
the  overthrow  of  that  policy  by  revolutionary  meas 
ures.  Elections  are  commonly  decided  by  the  votes 
of  a  class  of  independent  citizens,  who  belong  strictly 
to  neither  of  the  two  parties ;  and  the  course  pursued 
by  the  Democrats  pushed  this  class  for  the  time  into 
the  Republican  ranks.  The  intellect  of  the  Demo 
cratic  party  is  concentrated,  to  a  great  degree,  in  its 
Copperhead  members  ;  and  these  had  become  so  em 
bittered  and  vindictive  by  the  turn  events  had  taken, 
that  their  malignity  prevented  their  ability  from  hav- 


298  MORAL  SIGNIFICANCE  OF 

ing  fair  play.  They  assailed  the  Republicans  for  not 
giving  peace  and  prosperity  to  the  nation,  and  then 
laid  down  a  programme  which  proposed  to  reach  peace 
and  prosperity  through  political  and  financial  anarchy. 
They  selected  unpopular  candidates,  and  then  placed 
them  on  a  platform  of  which  revolution  and  repudia 
tion  were  the  chief  planks.  Perhaps  even  with  these 
drawbacks  they  might  have  cajoled  a  sufficient  num 
ber  of  voters  to  succeed  in  the  election,  had  it  not 
been  for  the  frank  brutality  of  their  Southern  allies. 
To  carry  the  North,  their  reliance  was  on  fraud ;  but 
the  Southern  politicians  were  determined  to  carry 
their  section  by  terror  and  assassination,  and  no 
plausible  speech  could  be  made  by  a  Northern  Demo 
crat  the  effect  of  which  was  not  nullified  by  some 
Southern  burst  of  eloquence,  breathing  nothing  but 
proscription  and  war.  The  Democratic  party  was 
therefore  not  only  defeated,  but  disgraced.  To  suc 
ceed  as  it  succeeded  in  New  York  and  New  Jersey, 
in  Louisiana  and  Georgia,  did  not  prevent  its  fall,  but 
did  prevent  its  falling  with  honor.  To  the  infamy  of 
bad  ends  it  added  the  additional  infamy  of  bad  means  ; 
and  it  comes  out  of  an  overwhelming  general  reverse 
with  the  mortifying  consciousness  that  its  few  special 
victories  have  been  purchased  at  the  expense  of  its 
public  character.  The  only  way  it  can  recover  its 
prestige  is  by  discarding,  not  only  its  leaders,  but  the 
passions  and  ideas  its  leaders  represent. 

The  moral  significance  of  the  struggle  which  has 
just  closed  is  thus  found  in  the  fact  that  the  good 


THE  REPUBLICAN  TRIUMPH.  299 

cause  was  best  served  by  its  bitterest  enemies.  A 
bad  institution,  like  slavery,  generates  a  bad  type  of 
character  in  its  supporters,  and  urges  them  blindly  on 
to  the  adoption  of  measures  which,  intended  for  its 
defence,  result  in  its  ruin.  The  immense  achieve 
ment  of  emancipating  four  millions  of  slaves,  and 
placing  them  on  an  equality  of  civil  and  political 
rights  with  their  former  masters,  is  due  primarily 
to  such  men  as  Calhoun  and  McDuffie,  Davis  and 
Toombs,  Vallandigham,  Pendleton,  Belmont,  John 
son,  and  Seymour.  The  prejudice  in  the  United 
States  against  the  colored  race  was  strong  enough 
to  overcome  everything  but  their  championship  of  it. 
These  persons  taught  the  nation  that  its  safety  de 
pended  on  its  being  just.  The  most  careless  glance 
over  the  chief  incidents  in  the  long  contest  shows 
that  all  the  enemies  of  human  freedom  needed  for 
success  was  a  little  moderation  and  good  sense ;  but 
moderation  and  good  sense  are  fortunately  not  the 
characteristics  of  men  engaged  in  doing  the  Devil's 
work  for  the  Devil's  pay.  "  The  Lord  reigns,"  —  a 
simple  proposition,  but  one  which  politicians  find  it 
hard  to  accept,  and  which  they  often  waste  immense 
energies  in  the  impotent  attempt  to  overturn. 

January,  1869. 


"LORD"  BACON. 

SOME  attempts  have  been  recently  made  to  extin 
guish  Shakspeare's  individuality  in  Bacon's.  Any 
reader  who  intimately  knows  and  sincerely  loves  both 
authors  instinctively  feels  that  the  external  evidence 
against  Shakspeare's  real  existence  is  simply  un 
worthy  of  critical  consideration.  Shakspeare's  vast 
mind  is  in  itself  a  sufficient  puzzle  for  the  critic  and 
the  metaphysician  to  explain ;  to  blend  it  with  Ba 
con's  is  to  double  the  difficulties  of  the  problem. 
Shakspeare  and  Bacon  are  both  high  above  the  ordi 
nary  range  of  even  eminent  intellects  and  souls ;  but 
to  say  that  Bacon  "wrote  Shakspeare"  is  to  introduce 
hopeless  confusion  into  the  philosophy  of  the  human 
mind.  Every  critic  who  has  the  slightest  discern 
ment  of  spirits  must  know  that  the  mental  processes 
of  Shakspeare  and  Bacon  are  fundamentally  different, 
— a  difference  which  goes  deep  down  into  vital  sources 
of  individual  genius.  Shakspeare  individualizes  the 
results  of  his  knowledge;  Bacon  generalizes  the  re 
sults  of  his.  The  mind  of  Shakspeare  darts  to  con 
clusions  ;  the  mind  of  Bacon  moves  to  them  with  a 
gravity  worthy  of  a  lord  chancellor.  Both  are  men 
of  large  reason,  large  understanding,  large  imagina 
tion,  large  individuality  ;  but  they  are  different  not 
only  in  degree,  but  in  kind.  It  would  be  impossible 


"LORD"  BACON.  301 

for  any  intelligent  critic  to  reconcile  a  really  charac 
teristic  work  of  Shakspeare  with  a  really  character 
istic  work  of  Bacon.  The  mental  processes  of  the 
two  men  are  radically  dissimilar. 

This,  however,  is  a  digression.  It  may  be  doubted 
if  such  a  man  as  Shakspeare  ever  lived ;  it  is  certain 
that  no  such  man  as  "  Lord  "  Bacon  ever  existed. 

Francis  Bacon,  Sir  Francis  Bacon,  Baron  Verulam, 
Viscount  St.  Albans,—  these  represent  one  individu 
ality  ;    but  Lord  Bacon  is  demonstrably  a  fictitious 
personage  who  never  had  any  real  existence  on  our 
planet.     Lord  Verulam,  Lord   St.   Albans   is   some- 
body  we  can  recognize  ;  but  Lord  Bacon  is  an  indi 
vidual  unknown  to  the  British  peerage.     Hardwicke, 
Brougham,  and  Macaulay  selected  their  family  names 
when  they  were  made  nobles ;  but  who  would  speak 
of  Chesterfield  as  Lord  Stanhope,  or  Chatham  as  Lord 
Pitt  ?     Bacon  deliberately  chose  to  be  Lord   Verulam 
and  Lord  St.  Albans  rather  than  Lord  Bacon.     Why 
should  everybody,  including  scores  of  men  who  know 
better,  still  persist  in  calling  him  "Lord"  Bacon? 
"  Posterity,"  says  Macaulay,  «  has  felt  that  the  great 
est  of  English  philosophers  could  derive  no  accession 
of  dignity  from  any  title  which  James  could  bestow ; 
and,  in  defiance  of  the  royal  letters-patent,  has  ob 
stinately  refused  to  degrade  Francis  Bacon  into  Vis 
count  St.  Albans."     But  still  Macaulay's  article  in 
the  "  Edinburgh  Review,"  and  the  reprint  of  it  in  his 
collected  "  Essays,"  supervised  by  himself,  is  headed 
"  Lord  "  Bacon. 


302  "LORD"  BACON. 

Some  ingenious  antiquaries  may  account  for  this 
misnomer  on  the  ground  that  men  of  science  felt  a 
necessity  to  discriminate  between  Friar  Bacon,  one  of 
the  first  of  modern  experimental  philosophers,  and 
Francis  Bacon,  his  supposed  intellectual  descendant, 
by  calling  the  latter  "  Lord  "  Bacon,  in  spite  of  the 
inexorable  laws  of  the  peerage. 

We  must  confess  to  a  deep  distrust  of  every  theory 
which  pretends  to  account  for  the  fact  that  Baron 
Yerulam  or  Viscount  St.  Albans  has  been  universally 
converted  into  u  Lord  "  Bacon.  The  fact  that  he  is 
Lord  Bacon  forever,  though  utterly  debarred  from  the 
title  by  his  own  deliberate  choice,  remains  to  be  ex 
plained.  We  obstinately  put  "  Lord  "  before  a  name 
in  itself  ignominious,  —  a  name  which  suggests  the 
hog,  the  dirtiest  and  basest  of  beasts,  —  when  the 
owner  of  it  sought  to  change  the  name  into  the  more 
resounding  appellation  of  Verulam  and  St.  Albans. 

Still,  every  essayist,  scientist,  and  philosopher  ad 
heres  to  the  family  name  of  "  Bacon."  The  associa 
tions  connected  with  the  hog  do  not  seem  to  trouble 
them  at  all  in  celebrating  the  merits  of  one  of  the 
most  humane,  most  fertile,  and  most  comprehensive 
of  human  intellects.  But  why  should  they  persist  in 
calling  him  "  Lord  "  Bacon  ? 

We  would  suggest  an  explanation,  based  on  the 
oldest  of  all  old  jokes.  "  Why,"  said  Eve  to  Adam, 
when  our  ancestor  was  engaged  in  naming  the  indi 
viduals  of  the  animal  kingdom,  —  '4  why  do  you  call 
that  beast  a  lion?"  "  Because,"  replied  Adam,  "he 


"LORD"  BACON.  303 

looks  like  a  lion."  Well,  Bacon  is  called  a  Lord 
because  he  "looks  like"  a  Lord.  King  James  only 
ratified  a  nobility  which  Nature  had  anticipated  him 
in  conferring.  Bacon  .was  a  nobleman  from  his 
cradle.  He  had  the  autocracy,  the  largeness,  the 
sobriety  of  intellect  which  are  generally  recognized 
as  the  signs  of  a  commanding  nature. 

Whatever  may  be  our  opinion  of  him  as  a  practical 
statesman,  we  all  feel,  in  reading  him,  that  we  are 
in  communion  with  an  intellect  which  is  essentially 
lordly.  His  "  Method  of  Induction,"  which  some 
men  of  science  ostentatiously  celebrate  but  practically 
disregard,  is  demonstrably  inadequate  to  explain  the 
progress  of  modern  invention  and  discovery.  By  his 
Method  he  never  discovered  anything  himself ;  and 
certainly  by  his  Method  nothing  has  ever  been  dis 
covered  by  those  who  rank  themselves  among  his 
disciples.  Still,  he  keeps  his  position  as  a  kind  of 
autocrat  by  the  sheer  force  of  a  certain  grandeur  in 
his  intelligence.  It  is  useless  to  show  that  he  mis 
conceived  the  object  of  science,  and  was  ignorant  of 
its  processes  ;  he  is  still  "  Lord  "  Bacon  even  to  such 
men  as  Whewell,  Herschel,  Comte,  Mill,  Huxley, 
Lewes,  and  Herbert  Spencer.  Every  tyro  in  science 
can  expose  the  errors  of  his  Method ;  every  eminent 
scientist  persists  in  calling  him  "  Lord,"  and  persists 
in  calling  him  Bacon.  Verulam  is  a  grander  title  ; 
but  it  has  never  forced  itself  either  into  popular  or 
scientific  speech. 

In  his  own  time  Bacon  exercised  the  same  power 


304  "LORD"  BACON. 

over  intelligent  contemporaries  that  lie  now  exercises 
over  men  of  science,  who  more  or  less  despise  each 
other,  but  who  are  still  faithful  to  him.  "  My  con 
ceit  of  his  person,"  says  Ben  Jonson,  the  most  caus 
tic  and  irreverent  of  critics,  "  was  never  increased 
toward  him  by  his  place  or  honors ;  but  I  have  and  do 
reverence  him  for  the  greatness  that  was  only  proper 
to  himself — in  that  he  seemed  to  me  ever  by  his  work 
one  of  the  greatest  men  and  most  worthy  of  admira 
tion  that  had  been  in  many  ages.  In  his  adversity  I 
ever  prayed  that  God  would  give  him  strength,  for 
greatness  he  could  not  want."  It  is  said  that  no  man 
is  a  hero  to  his  intimates  and  domestics.  But  Ba 
con's  chaplain,  Dr.  Rawley,  quaintly  says  :  "  I  have 
been  induced  to  think  that  if  ever  there  were  a  beam 
of  knowledge  derived  from  God  upon  any  man  in 
these  modern  times  it  was  upon  him."  Ben  Jon- 
son's  emphatic  statement  of  Bacon's  essential  "  great 
ness,"  even  in  his  disgrace  and  adversity,  has  been 
accepted  by  modern  philosophers.  They  feel  a  tender 
respect  and  veneration  for  the  man  whose  theories 
they  contemptuously  disregard.  And  they  still  call 
him  "  Lord  "  Bacon  because  he  "  looks  like  a  Lord." 
In  the  utter  wreck  of  his  system  they  yet  recognize  a 
grand  intelligence  which  in  many  respects  dwarfs 
their  own. 

Bacon  is  by  no  means  the  founder  of  the  inductive 
sciences.  It  is  simply  ridiculous  to  place  him  above 
Galileo  and  Kepler,  either  in  the  theories  or  the  dis 
coveries  of  inductive  science.  Nobody  who  has  not 


"LORD"  BACON.  805 

patiently  read  Bacon's  "  Novum  Organum," —  which 
few  modern  men  of  science  seem  to  have  done,  —  can 
appreciate  the  impertinence  of  such  men  as  Newton 
and  La  Place  in  violating  the  directions  of  their  sup 
posed  lord  and  master.  Their  discoveries  have  been 
made  in  a  very  suspicious,  a  very  illegitimate  man 
ner,  according  to  the  Baconian  system.  The  dis 
covery  of  the  great  law  of  gravitation,  which  made 
astronomy  a  deductive  science,  was  something  of  which 
Bacon  never  dreamed.  According  to  his  principles  of 
induction,  which  contemplated  a  continual  series  of 
inductive  steps,  that  law  should  not  have  been  arrived 
at  for  five  hundred  or  a  thousand  years.  Still,  we 
have  not  any  doubt  that  Newton,  at  any  period  of 
his  career,  would  have  respectfully  referred  to  Baron 
Verulam  as  "  Lord  "  Bacon.  Every  admirer,  indeed, 
"  saves  his  Bacon,"  but  will  not  give  up  the  "  Lord." 
All  who  read  him  are  impressed  with  a  certain  dig 
nity,  majesty,  and  grandeur  in  his  intelligence,  which 
instinctively  leads  them  to  endow  him  witli  a  title 
he  disowned.  In  spite  of  his  obvious  defects,  both  as 
jurist  and  scientist,  they  experience  something  of  the 
feeling  which  led  Cowley  to  select  him  from  mankind 
as  the  one  man 

"  Whom  a  wise  king  and  Nature  chose 
Lord  chancellor  of  both  their  laws." 

In  short,  we  all  feel  the  essential  "  greatness  "  which 
Ben  Jonson  recognized,  and  call  him"  Lord  "Bacon, 
because  he  "  looks  like  a  Lord." 

20 


LOWELL  AS  A   PROSE  WRITER. 

THE  publication  of  an  additional  volume  of  prose 
papers  by  Lowell  will  be  taken,  by  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  public,  as  a  kind  of  confirmation  of 
Carlyle's  surly  dictum,  that  if  a  man  has  anything 
to  say,  he  had  better  say  it  in  prose  ;  while  even  those 
who  appreciate  the  subtle  melodies  of  Lowell's  verse 
will  be  grateful  for  such  a  book  as  "  My  Study  Win 
dows."  Lowell  is  indeed  one  of  the  most  exquisite 
prose  writers  of  the  century,  the  master  of  a  style 
which,  while  it  is  flexible  to  all  the  demands  of 
statement,  description,  reflection,  epigram,  and  nar 
rative,  is  strongly  individualized,  and  suggests  no 
model  on  which  it  is  formed.  It  is  as  much  a  crea 
tion  of  his  own  mind  and  intellectual  character  as 
are  the  thoughts  and  imaginations  it  conveys.  Many 
years  ago  a  volume  was  published  under  the  capti 
vating  title  of  "  Prose,  by  a  Poet."  We  have  no  rec 
ollection  whether  the  matter  did  or  did  not  answer 
to  the  exhilarating  announcement ;  but  certainly  such 
a  title  might,  without  presumption,  be  taken  as  a 
general  one  fitly  characterizing  "My  Study  Win 
dows,"  "  Among  My  Books,"  and  "  Fireside  Travels," 
the  three  volumes  of  Lowell's  prose  writings.  In 
all  three  we  have  learning,  wit,  humor,  thought, 


LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER.  307 

sentiment,  description,  criticism,  characterization,  in 
abundance ;  but  the  fact  that  the  writer  is  a  poet  is 
too  plain  to  escape  the  dullest  reader.  The  cheer 
and  charm  of  a  poetic  imagination  are  felt,  whether 
the  poet  states,  reasons,  satirizes,  denounces,  describes, 
or  pokes  fun. 

The  volume  not  inaptly  styled  "  Fireside  Travels  " 
is  less  known  than  the  other  two ;  but  it  is  one  of  the 
most  delicious  of  Lowell's  works,  for  it  reproduces  as 
vividly  the  scenery  and  character  of  the  backwoods 
of  Maine  as  it  does  the  scenery,  population,  and  art 
of  Italy.  Without  stirring  from  our  firesides,  we  are 
transported  into  the  places,  wild  or  over-civilized, 
into  which  the  author  has  penetrated ;  and  we  view 
them  through  the  eyes  of  a  poetic  humorist,  who 
makes  us  keenly  enjoy  everything  he  so  clearly 
represents. 

These  three  volumes  are  really  additions  to  Ameri 
can  and  to  English  literature.  This  cannot  be  said 
of  thousands  of  excellent  books,  published  on  either 
side  of  the  Atlantic,  which,  however  valuable  they 
may  be  for  the  time,  contain  nothing,  contributed 
from  the  minds  of  their  authors,  which  will  survive 
the  occasions  which  called  them  forth.  The  per 
manent  element  in  Lowell's  prose  is  Lowell's  genius, 
not  Lowell's  topics ;  and  his  genius,  like  the  genius 
of  Addison,  or  Goldsmith,  or  Charles  Lamb,  is  suffi 
ciently  powerful  to  give  permanence  even  to  trifles. 
The  town-pump  of  Salem,  as  we  see  it  through  Haw 
thorne's  imagination,  will  survive  Napoleon's  cam- 


308  LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER.' 

paigns,  as  told  by  Sir  Archibald  Alison ;  and  certainly 
many  an  excellent  compend  of  botany  and  zoology 
will  be  forgotten  when  Lowell's  "  Garden  Acquaint 
ance  "  and  "  Good  Word  for  Winter  "  will  be  read  with 
delight. 

But  though  Lowell  can  give  trifles  more  impor 
tance  than  the  ordinary  run  of  men  are  able  to  give 
to  subjects  in  themselves  great,  he  is,  of  course,  to  be 
judged  by  his  way  of  dealing  with  the  higher  objects 
of  human  interest.  An  earnest  student,  not  only  of 
languages,  but  of  the  science  of  language,  his  ac 
quirements  are  on  a  level  with  his  genius.  In  the 
niceties  of  verbal  criticism,  as  in  the  application  of 
comprehensive  artistic  principles,  he  seems  equally 
at  home.  The  great  authors  of  Greece,  Rome,  Italy, 
Spain,  Germany,  and  England  he  profoundly  appre 
ciates  and  acutely  interprets ;  but  at  the  same  time 
he  over  whelms  those  students  of  old  English  litera 
ture  whom  John  Russell  Smith  employed  to  edit 
his  "  Library  of  Old  Authors "  with  an  amount  of 
recondite  knowledge  of  the  way  forgotten  authors 
employ  half-forgotten  English  words,  which  must 
appear  to  those  editors  somewhat  appalling.  They 
never  could  have  dreamed  that  the  Yankee  author 
of  the  "  Biglow  Papers "  was  competent  to  overturn 
their  pretensions  to  Elizabethan  scholarship.  But 
Lowell  has  done  it  so  thoroughly  that  even  the 
"  Saturday  Review  "  would  acknowledge  the  complete 
ness  of  the  demolition.  Again,  in  the  article  on 
Chaucer,  also  included  in  the  collection  of  papers 


LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER.  309 

called  "  My  Study  Windows,"  there  is  not  only 
evinced  an  open  sense  to  Chaucer's  genius,  entirely 
independent  of  all  controversies  regarding  his  versi 
fication,  but  a  terrible  amount  of  erudition,  of  which 
the  pedants  of  early  English  literature  consider  that 
they  hold  the  monopoly.  Still,  all  this  minute  knowl 
edge  is  so  displayed  as  to  entertain  as  well  as  'to 
inform.  The  antiquary  and  the  philologist  never 
forgets  that  he  is  a  poet,  whose  special  function  it 
is  to  give  artistic  pleasure  even  when  he  is  discuss 
ing  topics  from  the  consideration  of  which  ordinary 
readers  shrink  with  an  instinctive  dread  of  their 
dulness. 

And  this  brings  us  to  the  peculiar,  the  almost  un 
matched  "brilliancy"  of  Lowell's  prose.  There  is 
hardly  a  sentence  —  there  certainly  cannot  be  a  page 

—  in  his  three  volumes  which  is  not  made  attractive 
through  his  mode  of  expression.     This  attractiveness 
comes  from  the  incessant  action  of  his  mind  in  com 
position,  —  no  word,  phrase    or   verbal   combination 
indicating  a  resort  to  those   commonplace   forms   of 
utterance   such   as   many    original    thinkers    do   not 
hesitate   to   employ.      Lowell's    thoughts,   as    Bacon 
would   say,   "  are   immersed   in   matter "  —  allusion, 
image,  and  metaphor,  serious  or  humorous  —  flowing 
from  him  in  an  unexhausted  and  seemingly  inexhaust 
ible  stream.     Take  his  paper  on  "  Carlyle,"  or  "  Tho- 
reau,"  or  u  Abraham  Lincoln,"  or  "  Josiah  Quincy," 
or  "  Emerson  the  Lecturer,"  or  "  Chaucer,"  or  "  Pope," 

—  all  included  in  his  last  volume,  —  and  the  reader, 


310  LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER. 

whether  he  agrees  or  disagrees  with  the  opinions 
expressed,  cannot  but  be  amazed  at  the  endless  fer 
tility  and  constant  felicity  of  the  imaginative  forms  of 
expression.  Lowell  thinks  in  figures,  giving  us  the 
thought  in  the  image,  not  the  thought  and  the  image. 
Let  us  take  some  carelessly  selected  specimens.  "  The 
lecturer  built  up  so  lofty  a  pedestal  under  certain 
figures  as  to  lift  them  into  a  prominence  of  obscurity, 
and  seemed  to  mast-head  them  there."  Emerson's 
"  eye  for  a  fine,  telling  phrase,  that  will  carry  true,  is 
like  that  of  a  backwoodsman  for  a  rifle ;  and  he  will 
dredge  you  up  a  choice  word  from  the  mud  of  Cotton 
Mather  himself."  "  One  may  think  roses  as  good  in 
their  way  as  cabbages ;  though  the  latter  would  make 
a  better  show  in  the  witness-box,  if  cross-examined  as 
to  their  usefulness."  If  Emerson  "  were  to  make  an 
almanac,  his  direction  to  farmers  would  be  something 
like  this  :  October  :  Indian  Summer  ;  now  is  the  time 
to  get  in  your  early  Vedas."  Thoreau  "  watched 
Nature  like  a  detective  who  is  to  go  upon  the  stand ; 
as  we  read  him,  it  seems  as  if  all-out-of-doors  had  kept 
a  diary  and  become  its  own  Montaigne"  "  An  apostle 
to  the  Gentiles  might  hope  for  some  fruit  of  his 
preaching;  but  of  what  avail  an  apostle  who  shouts 
his  message  down  the  mouth  of  the  pit  to  poor  lost 
souls,  whom  he  can  positively  assure  only  that  it  is 
impossible  to  get  out?  Mr.  Carlyle  lights  up  the 
lanterns  of  his  Pharos  after  the  ship  is  already  rolling 
between  the  tongue  of  the  sea  and  the  grinders  of  the 
reef."  But  it  is  useless  to  give  such  bricks  as  these 


LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER.  311 

as  specimens  of  Lowell's  figurative  style.  He  is  so 
rich  in  this  respect  that  one  feels,  in  reading  him,  as 
Voltaire's  Candide  felt  when  he  lighted  on  that  fabu 
lous  country  where  precious  stones  were  as  common 
as  the  unprecious  are  with  us.  He  cheapens  the  value 
of  his  brilliants  by  the  profusion  with  which  he  scatters 
them.  Lady  Granville,  when  her  husband  was  the 
British  minister  at  the  Court  of  Russia,  had  her 
coronet,  the  jewels  of  which  were  worth  scores  of 
thousands  of  pounds,  broken  in  one  of  those  fashion 
able  mobs  at  St.  Petersburg,  called  court  balls.  She 
was,  at  the  time  of  the  accident,  making  her  way 
through  the  crowd  to  pay  her  respects  to  the  emperor 
and  empress ;  and  she  looked  neither  to  the  right  nor 
the  left,  but  moved  straight  on,  as  the  diamonds  and 
rubies  fell  on  the  floor,  and  were  trodden  under  the 
feet  of  the  genteel  multitude.  In  some  such  way 
Lowell  marches  to  his  "  objective  point,"  careless  of 
the  treasures  he  drops  by  the  way.  He  may  pride 
himself  on  his  sense,  his  sagacity,  his  insight,  his 
power  of  concentrated  thought,  his  force  of  char 
acter  ;  he  never  prides  himself  on  his  ornaments  and 
decorations. 

In  "  Among  My  Books  "  and  "  My  Study  Windows  " 
there  is  a  large  amount  of  keen  literary  criticism, 
which  is  hardly  suggested  by  the  mere  titles  of  the 
essays.  In  the  four  articles  on  Chaucer,  Shakspeare, 
Dryden,  and  Pope  the  whole  field  of  modern  European 
literature  is  opened  to  the  reader's  view.  The  scope 
of  Lowell's  scholarship  is  so  extensive  that,  though 


312  LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER. 

the  special  representative  author  he  discusses  is  ex 
haustively  treated,  he  includes  in  his  criticism  scores 
of  other  writers  who  illustrate  the  age  which  his 
principal  personage  dominates.  To  thoughtful  stu 
dents  of  English  literature  the  article  on  Pope — the 
most  discriminating  criticism,  on  the  whole,  ever 
written  on  that  poet  —  is  attractive  not  only  for  its 
analysis  of  Pope,  but  for  its  general  estimate  of  the 
literature  and  writers  of  the  reign  of  Anne  and  the 
first  two  Georges. 

It  is  a  good  sign  for  American  literature  that  Lowell 
is  warmly  appreciated  by  all  the  educated  men  and 
women  of  the  country.  The  wonder  is  that  he  is  not 
one  of  our  most  popular  authors.  He  is  in  perfect 
sympathy  with  all  shrewd  and  sensible  people,  what 
ever  may  be  the  degrees  of  their  culture ;  and  cer 
tainly  none  of  the  American  writers  of  novels  for  the 
newspapers  which  circulate  hundreds  of  thousands  of 
copies  weekly  can  compare  with  him  in  his  apprecia 
tion  of  "  the  popular  mind  "  and  his  command  of  the 
raciest  English.  At  any  farmer's  fireside  in  the  land 
he  would  be  welcomed  as  a  good  "  neighborly  "  man. 
Why  is  it  that  the  circulation  of  his  books  is  not  com 
mensurate  with  the  extent  of  his  literary  reputation  ? 
It  is  hardly  possible  to  take  up  a  newspaper,  whether 
published  in  New  York  or  Nebraska,  without  rinding 
an  allusion  to  Lowell  or  a  quotation  from  him  ;  and  to 
all  appearance  he  is  as  popular  as  Whittier,  or  Bret 
Harte,  or  Artemus  Ward,  or  Harriet  Beecher  Stowe. 
Still,  his  books  are  read  mainly  by  what  are  called 


LOWELL  AS  A  PROSE  WRITER.  313 

"  cultivated  "  people.  We  are  convinced  that  if  the 
(so-called)  "  uncultivated "  people  only  knew  what 
delight  they  might  find  in  Lowell's  prose  and  verse, 
they  would  domesticate  his  books  at  once  in  their 
homes.  The  only  criticism  which  a  "  cultivated " 
man  is  inclined  to  make  on  Lowell  is  simply  this: 
that  lie  is  the  most  exasperating  of  literary  aristocrats 
in  his  dealings  with  the  middle  class  and  lower  class 
of  literary  people.  The  middle  and  lower  classes, 
who  live  their  lives  without  pretending  to  versify 
them,  find  in  him  the  most  sympathizing  of  brothers 
and  friends ;  but  woe  to  any  one  of  them  who  puts  his 
mediocrity  into  rhyme ! 


IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

THE  reason  that  everybody  likes  novels  is,  that 
everybody  is  more  or  less  a  novelist.  In  addition  to 
the  practical  life  that  men  and  women  lead,  con 
stantly  vexed,  as  it  is,  by  obstructive  facts,  there  is 
an  interior  life  which  they  imagine,  in  which  facts 
smoothly  give  way  to  sentiments,  ideas,  and  aspira 
tions.  In  this  imagined  existence  people  strengthen 
themselves  with  new  faculties,  exalt  themselves  with 
new  passions,  surround  themselves  with  new  compan 
ions,  devote  themselves  to  new  objects.  They  are 
richer,  handsomer,  braver,  wittier,  nobler,  more  dis 
interested,  more  adventurous,  more  efficient,  than  they 
are  in  their  actual  personalities  and  mode  of  living. 
They  construct  long  stories,  long  as  their  own  lives, 
of  which  they  are  the  heroes  or  heroines ;  and  the 
novels  they  best  like  to  read  are  those  whose  scenes 
and  characters  best  lit  into  the  novel  they  are  them 
selves  incessantly  weaving.  The  universality  of  self- 
esteem  is  probably  due  to  the  fact  that  people  confuse 
the  possibilities  of  their  existence  with  its  actualities. 
Each  being  the  hero  of  "  My  Novel,"  gains  self- 
importance  in  virtue  of  that;  and  while  externally 
classed  with  the  "  nobodies,"  is  internally  conscious 
of  ranking  with  the  "  somebodies."  Burn  out  of  a 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  315 

man  indeed  everything  else,  —  sense,  sensibility,  and 
conscience,  —  you  will  still  find  alive  in  his  ashes  a 
little  self-conceit  and  a  little  imagination. 

"  How  much  do  you  weigh  ? "  a  man  was  asked. 
"  Well,"  he  replied,  "  ordinarily  only  a  hundred  and 
twenty  pounds ;  but  when  I  'm  mad,  I  weigh  a  ton !  " 
But  the  great  increase  of  weight  arises  when  a  per 
son  is  kindled  with  a  conception  of  what  he  has  a 
possibility  of  becoming. 

It  is  evident  that,  as  these  novel-spinning  factories 
are  in  full  operation  in  all  heads,  the  only  check  on 
their  written  production  is  the  necessity  for  some 
talent  for  narrative  and  some  knack  in  composition. 
Hence,  in  the  first  place,  a  swarm  of  romancers,  who 
have  properly  no  place  in  literature,  and  who  repre 
sent  every  variety  of  mediocrity,  from  the  fussy  and 
furious  dead-level  of  sensationalism  to  the  tame  and 
timid  dead-level  of  conventionality.  Some  put  blood 
in  their  ink,  some  water ;  but  it  must  be  said  that  in 
these  matters  blood  is  not  always  thicker  than  water. 
Rise  a  step  above  this  level,  introduce  some  art  in 
the  plot  and  some  truth  in  the  characterization, 
keep  as  close  to  actual  life  as  a  photographer,  be 
as  diffuse  and  as  dogged  in  details  as  is  consistent 
with  preserving  a  kind  of  languid  interest,  econo 
mize  material,  whether  of  incident  or  emotion,  real 
ize  Carlyle's  sarcasm  that  England  contains  twenty 
millions  of  people,  mostly  bores,  —  and  you  have 
Anthony  Trollope,  the  most  unromantic  of  romancers, 
popular  in  virtue  of  his  skill  in  reproducing  a  popula- 


316  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

tion.  Vitalize  this  dull  reality  by  vivid  feeling,  put 
passion  into  everything,  eliminate  all  that  does  not 
stimulate,  be  as  fruitful  in  incidents  as  Trollope  is 
in  commonplaces,  envelop  the  reader  in  a  whirl  of 
events,  drag  him  violently  on  through  a  series  of 
minor  unexpected  catastrophes  to  the  grand  unex 
pected  catastrophe  at  the  end,  heap  stimulants  on 
him  until  he  feels  like  a  mad  Malay  running  amuck 
through  the  streets,  —  and  you  have  Charles  Reade, 
the  great  master  of  melodramatic  effect.  This  social 
life  which  Trollope  does  not  penetrate,  which  Reade 
exaggerates, — look  at  it  with  a  curious,  sceptical 
eye,  sharpened  by  a  jaded  heart ;  be  superior  to  all 
the  fine  illusions  of  existence,  by  defect  of  spiritual  in 
sight  as  well  as  by  subtlety  of  external  observation ; 
lay  bare  all  the  hypocrisies  and  rascalities  of  "  proper  " 
people  without  losing  faith  in  the  possibility  of  virtue ; 
survey  men  and  women  in  their  play  rather  than  in 
their  real  struggle  and  work ;  bring  all  the  resources 
of  keen  observation,  incisive  wit,  and  delicate  humor 
to  the  task  of  exhibiting  the  frailties  of  humanity  with 
out  absolutely  teaching  that  it  is  hopelessly  vicious 
and  effete,  —  be,  in  short,  a  sceptical  Hume  turned 
novelist,  and  you  have  Thackeray,  a  kindly  man  of 
genius,  honestly  forced  by  his  peculiar  intellect  and 
experience  to  inculcate  the  dreadful  doctrine  that 
life  does  not  pay.  Add  Thackeray's  sharp  and  bright 
perception  to  Trollope's  nicety  in  detail,  and  supple 
ment  both  with  large  scholarship  and  wide  reach  of 
philosophic  insight ;  conceive  a  person  who  looks  not 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  31T 

only  at  life  and  into  life,  but  through  it,  who  sympa 
thizes  with  the  gossip  of  peasants  and  the  prin 
ciples  of  advanced  thinkers,  who  is  as  capable  of 
reproducing  Fergus  O'Conner  as  John  Stuart  Mill, 

and  is  as  blandly  tolerant  of  Garrison  as  of  Hegel, 

and  you  have  the  wonderful  woman  who  calls  herself 
George  Eliot,  probably  the  largest  mind  among  the 
romancers  of  the  century,  but  with  an  incurable  sad 
ness  at  the  depth  of  her  nature  which  deprives  her 
of  the  power  to  cheer  the  readers  she  interests  and 
informs. 

It  may  here   be   said   that  in   a   peculiar  and  re 
stricted  domain  of  imagination   the  great  American 
novelist,  Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  has  fairly  outmatched 
all  his  English  brethren.     He  is   the   Jonathan   Ed 
wards  of  the  imaginative   representation   of  life,  as 
Thackeray  is  its  Hume.     He  teaches  with  vivid  dis 
tinctness  the  doctrine  of  "the  exceeding  sinfulness 
of  sin."     Scott  once  said  that  there  were  depths  in 
human  nature   which  it  was  unhealthy  to  attempt  to 
sound;  and  it  is  in  attempting  to  sound  these   that 
Hawthorne  has  exhibited  his  most  marvellous   gifts 
of  insight  and  characterization.     In  the  subtlety  and 
accuracy,  the  penetration  and  sureness,  of  his  glance 
into  the  morbid  phenomena  of  the   human   soul ;  in 
exhibiting  the  operation  of  the  most  delicate  laws  of 
attraction  and  repulsion  which   human   natures   can 
experience ;  in  the  capacity  to  terrify  his  readers  with 
the  consciousness  of  their  latent  possibilities  for  evil, 
so  that  they  shrink  from  his  pitiless  exposures  "  like 


318  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

guilty  things  surprised,"  he  makes  novelists  like 
Thackeray  and  Dickens  appear  relatively  superficial ; 
but,  as  Scott  had  foretold,  the  representation  is  too 
ghostly  and  ghastly  to  give  that  degree  of  artistic 
pleasure  which  is  the  condition  of  a  novelist's  com 
plete  success  with  the  public. 

Each  of  these  novelists  has  a  particular  class  of 
appreciative  readers  whose  individual  experience  of 
life  they  specially  meet.  But  there  are  two  roman 
cers,  Scott  and  Dickens,  who  are  liked  and  loved 
by  everybody,  because,  by  the  happiness  of  their  na 
tures  as  well  as  the  force  of  their  genius,  they  are 
radiators  of  cheer,  and  communicate  the  most  de 
licious  imaginative  enjoyment.  Different  in  many 
important  respects,  they  agree,  in  that  last  and 
inmost  felicity  of  genius,  —  of  being  universally  at 
tractive.  They  are  the  only  novelists  who  have  suc 
ceeded  in  domesticating  their  creations  in  all  imagi 
nations  as  real  human  beings,  whose  wit  or  wisdom, 
whose  joys  or  sorrows,  whose  hates  or  love,  we  re 
fer  to  as  confidently  as  Mrs.  Gamp  did  to  her  dear, 
ideal  Mrs.  Harris,  —  more  real  to  the  eye  of  her 
mind  than  the  Betsey  Prig  she  daily  beheld  in  super 
abundant  flesh. 

To  achieve  this  miracle  Dickens  must  not  only 
have  had  exceptional  powers  of  observation  and  im 
agination,  but  extraordinary  intensity  of  sympathy 
with  ordinary  feelings  and  beliefs.  His  genius  in 
characterization  tends  to  the  grotesque  and  extrava 
gant;  his  personages,  in  their  names  as  in  their 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  319 

qualities,  produce  on  us  the  effect  of  strangeness ; 
the  plots  of  the  novels  in  which  they  appear  would, 
with  any  other -characters,  seem  grossly  improbable; 
and  yet  his  mind  is  unmistakably  rooted  in  com 
mon  sense  and  common  humanity.  He  thus  suc 
ceeds  in  giving  his  readers  all  the  pleasure  which 
comes  from  contemplating  what  is  strange,  odd,  and 
eccentric,  without  disquieting  them  by  any  para 
doxes  in  morals,  or  shocking  them  by  any  perver 
sions  of  homely  natural  sentiment.  The  "  Christmas 
Carol,"  for  example,  is  as  wild  in  grotesque  fancy 
as  a  dream  of  Hoffmann,  yet  in  feeling  as  solid  and 
sweet  and  humane  as  a  sermon  of  Channing.  It 
impresses  us  somewhat  as  we  are  impressed  by  the 
sight  of  the  Bible  as  illustrated  by  Gustave  Dore. 
Thus  held  fast  to  common,  homely  truths  and  feel 
ings  by  his  sentiments,  he  can  safely  give  reins  to 
his  imagination  in  his  creations.  The  keenest  of 
observers,  both  of  things  and  persons,  all  that  he 
observes  is  still  taken  up  and  transformed  by  his 
imagination,  —  becomes  Dickens-ized,  in  fact,  so  that 
whether  he  describes  a  landscape,  or  a  bootjack,  or 
a  building,  or  a  man,  we  see  the  object,  not  as  it 
is  in  itself,  but  as  it  is  deliciously  bewitched  by  his 
method  of  looking  at  it.  Everything  is  suggested 
by  his  outward  experience,  but  modified  by  his  in 
ward  experience.  The  result  is  that  we  do  not 
have  in  him  an  exact  transcript  of  life,  but  an  in 
dividualized  ideal  of  life,  from  his  point  of  view. 
He  has,  in  short,  discovered  and  colonized  one  of 


320  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

the  waste  districts  of  Imagination  which  we  may 
call  Dickens-land  or  Dickens-ville ;  from  his  own 
brain  he  has  peopled  it  with  some  fourteen  hundred 
persons;  and  it  agrees  with  the  settlements  made 
there  by  Shakspeare  and  Scott  in  being  better  known 
than  such  geographical  countries  as  Canada  and 
Australia;  and  it  agrees  with  them  equally  in 
confirming  us  in  the  belief  of  the  reality  of  a  pop 
ulation  which  has  no  actual  existence.  It  is  dis 
tinguished  from  all  other  colonies  in  Brainland  by 
the  ineffaceable  peculiarities  of  its  colonizer;  its  in 
habitants  don't  die  like  other  people,  but  alas !  they 
also  now  can't  increase ;  but  whithersoever  any  of 
them  may  wander,  they  are  recognized  at  once,  by  an 
unmistakable  birth-mark,  as  belonging  to  the  race 
of  Dickens.  A  man  who  has  done  this  is  not  merely 
one  of  a  thousand,  but  one  of  a  thousand  millions; 
for  he  has  created  an  ideal  population  which  is  more 
interesting  to  human  beings  than  the  great  body  of 
their  own  actual  friends  and  neighbors. 

And  how  shall  I  describe  this  population,  so  nu 
merous  and  so  various  ? 

It  must,  of  course,  be  divided  into  classes ;  and 
its  most  general  division  is  into  humane  people  and 
malignant  people.  The  one  test  of  merit  in  Dickens- 
land  is  goodness  of  heart;  and  it  contains  a  consid 
erable  number  of  highly  esteemed  persons  in  whom 
this  quality  is  connected  with  confusion  of  head.  No 
other  novelist  ever  drew  so  many  fools  and  half 
witted  people,  and  drew  them  so  humanely.  There, 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  321 

for  example,  is  poor  Miss  Flite,  the  crazed  suitor 
in  the  Court  of  Chancery,  who  has  discovered  that 
the  sixth  seal  mentioned  in  the  Revelation  is  the 
Great  Seal  of  the  Lord  Chancellor,  and  who  expects 
a  judgment  in  her  case  on  the  Day  of  Judgment. 
There  is  Miss  Betsey  Trotwood's  friend,  Mr.  Dick, 
with  his  head  hopelessly  troubled  and  intermixed 
with  that  of  King  Charles  the  First,  and  listening 
to  Dr.  Strong's  learned  dissertations  "  with  his  poor 
wits  wandering,  God  knows  where,  on  the  wings  of 
hard  words."  Add  a  little  conscious  brain,  so  that 
the  heart  can  stutter  into  half-intelligent  expression, 
and  you  have  what  Susan  Nipper  calls  "  that  innocent- 
est  creeter,  Toots."  This  young  gentleman,  as  the 
reader  will  remember,  had  been  subjected  to  Dr.  Blim- 
ber's  forcing  system  in  education,  but  "  had  stopped  off 
blowing  one  day,  and  remained  in  the  school  a  mere 
stalk  ; "  and  who,  "  when  he  began  to  have  whiskers, 
left  off  having  brains."  He  is  allowed,  in  his  with 
ered  condition  of  mind,  to  pursue  his  own  course  of 
study,  which  chiefly  consists  in  writing  "  long  letters 
to  himself  from  persons  of  distinction,  addressed  c  P. 
Toots,  Esq.,  Brighton,  Sussex/  and  to  preserve  them 
in  his  desk  with  great  care."  When  any  sudden  and 
heavy  call  is  made  on  his  intelligence,  such  as  being 
introduced  to"  a  new-comer,  iivthe  lieu  of  speech  he 
blushes,  chuckles,  and  breathes  hard.  He  gratifies 
his  secret  aspirations  to  be  a  dandy  and  a  swell,  by 
"  sticking  ornamental  pins  into  his  shirt,  and  keeping 
a  ring  in  his  waistcoat  pocket  to  put  on  his  little 

21 


322  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

finger  by  stealth,  when  the  pupils  are  out  walking." 
Two  instances  are  given  of  the  dark  vices  into  which 
this  confiding  innocent  runs.  Once,  he  is  led  out 
of  Mr.  Feeder's  room  into  the  open  in  a  state  of 
faintness,  consequent  on  an  unsuccessful  attempt  to 
smoke  a  very  blunt  cigar,  —  one  of  a  bundle  he  had 
mysteriously  purchased  "  from  a  most  desperate  smug 
gler,  who  had  acknowledged,  in  confidence,  that  two 
hundred  pounds  was  the  price  set  on  his  head,  dead 
or  alive,  by  the  Custom  House."  At  another  time,  in 
Mr.  Feeder's  room,  with  the  doors  locked,  he  and  that 
profligate  tutor  "  crammed  their  noses  with  snuff, 
endured  surprising  torments  of  sneezing  with  the 
constancy  of  martyrs,  and,  drinking  table  beer  at  in 
tervals,  felt  all  the  glories  of  dissipation."  When  he 
comes  into  his  property,  he  hires  a  set  of  apartments, 
employs  a  prize-fighter,  called  the  Game  Chicken,  to 
complete  his  education  as  a  gentleman,  and  falls  in 
love  with  Florence  Dombey.  The  attachment  proves 
hopeless,  and  he  becomes  a  prey  to  Byronic  despair. 
"  The  state  of  my  feelings  towards  Miss  Dombey,"  he 
says  to  Captain  Cuttle,  "  is  of  that  unspeakable  de 
scription,  that  my  heart  is  a  desert  island,  and  she 
lives  in  it  alone.  I  'm  getting  more  used  up  every 
day,  and  I  'm  proud  to  be  so.  If  you  could  see  my 
legs  when  I  take  my  boots  off,  you  'd  fofm  some  idea 
of  what  unrequited  affection  is.  I  have  been  pre 
scribed  bark,  but  I  don't  take  it,  for  I  don't  wish  to 
have  any  tone  whatever  given  to  my  constitution;  I  'd 
rather  not."  "  The  hollow  crowd,  when  they  see  me 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  323 

with  the  Chicken,  and  characters  of  distinction  like 
that,  suppose  me  to  be  happy  ;  but  I  'in  wretched." 
When  he  hears  of  Florence's  flight,  he  tells  Captain 
Cuttle  that  he  has  been  perfectly  frantic.  "I  have," 
he  exclaims,  "been  lying  on  the  sofa  all  night,  the 

Ruin  you  behold I  have  n't  dared  to  shave,  I  'm  in 

that  rash  state.  I  have  n't  had  my  clothes  brushed. 
My  hair  is  matted  together.  I  told  the  Chicken  that 
if  he  offered  to  clean  my  boots,  I'd  stretch  him  a 
corpse  before  me  !  " 

Dickens  makes  Toots  indeed  as  ridiculous  a  crea 
ture  as  can  well  be  conceived ;  but  then,  he  makes  him 
as  lovable  as  he  is  laughable.  The  readers  of  "Dom- 
bey  and  Son "  feel  that  he  is  of  infinitely  more  im 
portance  than  the  haughty  Edith,  or  the  keen  and 
cunning  Carker  of  that  wonderful  novel,  for  he  has  a 
good  heart  under  his  stammering  brain ;  and  Dick 
ens,  in  such  matters,  agrees  with  his  own  John 
Chivery,  who  says  of  his  foolish  son :  "  My  son  has 
a  'art,  and  my  son's  'art  is  in  the  right  place.  Me 
and  his  mother  knows  where  to  find  it,  and  we  find 
it  sitiwated  correct." 

Next  above  the  half-witted  we  have  the  stupid  char* 
acters  of  Dickens,  —  characters  in  whom  stupidity, 
however,  is,  as  it  is  in  Nature,  blended  with  self-impor 
tance.  Such  are  old  Joe  Willet,  Barkis,  Jack  Bunsby, 
Mr.  F.'s  Aunt,  and  the  rest.  Intellect  just  twinkles  in 
them,  like  a  fire-fly  in  the  dark.  "  That  chap,  sir," 
says  Mr.  Willet,  speaking  of  Hugh,  "  though  he  has 
all  his  faculties  about  him,  somewheres  or  another, 


324  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

bottled  up  and  corked  down,  has  no  more  imagination 
than  Barnaby  nas.  And  why  hasn't  he?  Because 
they  was  never  drawed  out  of  him  when  he  was  a 
boy.  That's  why.  What  would  any  of  us  have 
been,  if  our  fathers  had  n't  drawed  our  faculties  out 
of  us  ?  What  would  my  boy  Joe  have  been  if  I  had 
n't  drawed  his  faculties  out  of  him  ? " 

Again,  the  liquor-steeped  Durdles,  in  "  Edwin 
Drood,"  employs  the  boy-imp,  Deputy,  to  stone  him 
home,  when  he  is  out  after  ten  o'clock  at  night,  and 
takes  great  credit  on  himself  for  thus  giving  the  boy 
an  object  in  life.  u  What  was  he  before  ? "  he  says 
with  "  the  slow  gravity  of  beery  soddenness."  "  A 
destroyer.  What  work  did  he  do  ?  Nothing  but  de 
struction.  What  did  he  earn  by  it  ?  Short  terms  in 
Cloisterham  jail.  Not  a  person,  not  a  piece  of  prop 
erty,  not  a  winder,  not  a  horse,  nor  a  dog,  nor  a  cat, 
nor  a  bird,  nor  a  fowl,  nor  a  pig,  but  what  he  stoned 
for  want  of  an  enlightened  object.  I  put  that  en 
lightened  object  before  him,  and  now  he  can  turn  his 
honest  halfpenny  by  the  three  penn'orth  a  week." 
"  I  wonder  he  has  no  competitors,"  says  Mr.  Jasper. 
"  He  has  plenty,"  answers  Mr.  Durdles,  "  but  he 
stones  'em  all  away." 

Then  there  is  that  inscrutable  old  woman,  Mr.  F.'s 
Aunt,  in  "  Little  Dorrit,"  who  has  such  a  benevolent 
desire  that  Arthur  Clenman  shall  be  "  brought  for'ard" 
in  order  that  she  may  "  chuck  him  out  o'  winder ; "  who 
sits  down  in  the  pie-shop  with  the  inexorable  purpose 
not  to  move  until  the  "  chucking  "  process  has  been 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  825 

accomplished ;  and  who  subjects  her  companion  to 
some  embarrassment  in  consequence  of  "  an  idle 
rumor  which  circulated  among  the  credulous  infants 
of  the  neighborhood  to  the  effect  that  the  old  lady  had 
sold  herself  to  the  pie-shop  to  be  made  up,  and  was 
then  sitting  in  the  pie-shop  parlor  declining  to  com 
plete  her  contract." 

Connected  with  this  class  of  characters  is  a  class  in  ! 
which  conceit  carries  stupidity  to  an  elevation  quite 
ideal.  Sim  Tappertit,  Mr.  Kenwigs,  Mr.  Sapsea,  may 
be  cited  as  its  representatives.  Where  is  the  person 
so  fortunate  as  not  to  have  met  Mr.  Sapsea,  or  some 
body  who  strongly  suggested  him,  —  the  man  who 
gives  a  certain  grandeur  to  his  fat-wittedncss,  who  is 
heroically  dull  and  majestically  insensible,  and  whose 
conceit  could1  hardly  be  blasted  out  of  him  by  the 
heaviest  charge  of  nitro-glycerine  ?  Thinking,  in  his  j 
condescending  almightiness,  that  it  is  not  good  for 
man  to  be  alone,  he  cast  his  eye  about  him  for  a  nup 
tial  partner,  whose  mind  might  be  absorbed  in  his 
own.  That  eye,  thus  cast  about  him,  fell  on  Miss 
Brobity.  "  Miss  Brobity's  being,  young  man,"  he  says 
to  Mr  Jasper,  "  was  deeply  imbued  with  homage  to 
Mind.  She  revered  Mind,  when  launched,  or,  as  I  say, 
precipitated,  on  an  extensive  knowledge  of  the  world. 
When  I  made  my  proposal,  she  did  me  the  honor  to 
be  so  overshadowed  with  a  species  of  Awe,  as  to  be 
able  to  articulate  only  the  two  words,  <  0  Thou  ! '  — 
meaning  myself.  Her  limpid  blue  eyes  were  fixed 
upon  me,  her  semi-transparent  hands  were  clasped  to- 


326  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

gether,  pallor  overspread  her  aquiline  features,  and, 
though  encouraged  to  proceed,  she  never  did  proceed 
a  word  further.  Mrs.  Sapsea,  thus  courted,  soon  dies 
of  "  a  feeble  action  of  the  liver,"  and  to  the  very  last 
addressed  her  august  spouse,  playing  Jove  to  her 
Semele,  in  the  same  unfinished  terms  of  "  0  Thou  !  " 
And  perhaps  the  most  audacious  stroke  of  Dickens's 
extravagant  humor  is  found  in  the  inscription  which 
Mr.  Sapsea  places  on  her  monument :  — 

"ETHELINDA, 

Reverential  Wife  of 

MR.   THOMAS  SAPSEA, 

Auctioneer,  Vainer,  Estate  Agent,  &c., 

Of  this  city, 
"Whose  Knowledge  of  the  World, 

Though  somewhat  extensive, 
Never  brought  him  acquainted  with 

A   SPIRIT 

More  capable  of 

LOOKING  UP  TO  HIM. 

STRANGER  PAUSE 

And  ask  thyself  the  question, 

CANST  THOU   DO   LIKEWISE. 

If  Not, 
WITH  A  BLUSH   RETIRE." 

In  these  days  of  Woman's  Rights  that  epitaph  can 
not  but  have  a  healthful  influence  in  keeping  woman 
in  her  "  appropriate  sphere." 

We  do  no  injustice  to  that  "  fool  positive,"  Mr. 
Sapsea,  in  saying  we  make  an  ascent  in  the  mental 
scale  in  proceeding  to  consider  fools  after  the  fashion 
of  Mrs.  Nickleby.  She  is  the  type  of  a  class,  very 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  327 

numerous  in  actual  life,  whose  minds  are  run  away 
with  by  the  accidental  association  of  ideas,  —  who 
have  thoughts,  but  no  power  of  directing  their 
thoughts.  Flora  Casby,  in  "  Little  Dorrit,"  with  her 
unpunctuated  velocity  of  incoherent  talk,  belongs  to 
the  same  general  class.  So  does  Mr.  Sparkler,  whose 
stunted  brain  stammers  under  the  weight  of  his  ad 
miration  for  persons  who  have  "  no  nonsense  in 
them,"  —  in  his  case  a  purely  disinterested  and  pa 
thetic  tribute  to  all  human  beings  who  do  not  share 
his  special  defect.  So  does  tKe  poor  little  Barnacle 
of  the  Circumlocution  Office,  who  is  so  shocked  by 
Arthur  Clenman's  coming  into  the  office  with  a  de 
mand  to  "  know  "  something  about  the  matters  which 
the  Department  was  theoretically  instituted  to  ex 
plain.  Every  one  remembers  the  scene  at  Pet  Mea- 
gles's  marriage  with  Henry  Gowan,  in  which  this 
young  Barnacle  testifies  his  horror  and  indignation 
"  to  two  vapid  young  gentlemen,  his  relatives,"  at  the 
presence  of  Arthur  at  the  feast.  "  There  was  a  feller 
here,  look  here,  who  had  come  to  our  Department 
without  an  appointment,  and  said  he  wanted  to  know, 
you  know ;  and  that,  look  here,  if  he  was  to  break 
out  now,  as  he  might,  you  know  (for  you  never  could 
tell  what  an  ungentlemanly  Radical  of  that  sort  would 
be  up  to  next),  and  was  to  say,  look  here,  that  he 
wanted  to  know  this  moment,  you  know,  that  would  be 
jolly ;  would  n't  it?"  So  does  "  the  young  man  by  the 
name  of  Guppy,"  in  "  Bleak  House."  He  is  an  attor 
ney's  clerk  who,  in  proposing  to  Esther  Summerson, 


328  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

"  files  a  declaration ; "  who  represents  his  mother  as 
eminently  calculated,  by  her  virtues,  to  be  a  mother- 
in-law  ;  and  who,  with  vast  self-esteem,  and  desire  to 
strike  everybody  he  meets  with  an  impression  of  his 
superior  magnanimity  and  intelligence,  is  forced  by 
his  nature  to  demean  himself  like  the  wretched  snob 
he  is,  —  belonging,  as  he  does,  to  that  family  of  fools 
in  which  the  natural  variety  of  the  species  blends  with 
another  variety  which  it  would  be  profanity  to  name. 

C  It  is  difficult  to  say  where,  in  Dickens,  the  humor 
ist  ends  and  the  satirist  begins  ;  but  there  are  in  his 
works  whole  classes  of  character  in  which  the  satirist 
evidently  predominates.  His  method  of  assailing 
social  and  political  abuses  is  to  make  them  ridiculous 
or  hateful ;  and  he  makes  them  ridiculous  or  hateful 
by  impersonating  them  in  men  and  women.  We 
quote  them  as  we  quote  a  jest  or  bright  saying,  —  not 
as  characters,  but  as  epigrams  endowed  with  individ 
uality.  His  humorous  personages  spring  from  his 
sympathies,  his  satirical  ones  from  his  antipathies ; 
and  antipathy  never  gives  us  the  whole  and  inward 
truth  about  anybody,  but  makes  us  exaggerate  the 
trait  we  dislike  until  the  individual  is  all  merged  in 
his  particular  defect.  The  popularity  of  sucli  char 
acters  in  Dickens  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they  reflect 
popular  prejudices,  and  never  go  beyond  that  percep 
tion  of  externals,  which  is  our  easy,  intolerant  way  of 
judging  the  people  we  despise  or  detest.  The  intel 
lectual  limitations  of  Dickens  are  also  revealed  in  his 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  329 

satirical  sketches.  His  heart  is  developed  out  of  all 
proportion  to  his  brain.  The  abuses  of  a  system  blind 
his  eyes  to  its  merits  and  its  purpose.  He  is  a 
reformer,  but  a  reformer  whose  common  sense  is 
unaccompanied  with  comprehensive  intelligence,  and 
whose  moral  sense  frequently  impels  him  to  be  prac 
tically  unjust.  Nobody  who  is  carried  away  by  his 
delicious  satire  on  the  Barnacles  and  their  Circum 
locution  Office,  stops  to  think  that  the  Circumlocu 
tion  Office  is  simply  the  introduction  of  method  into 
the  transaction  of  public  business,  —  a  system  which, 
with  all  its  defects,  is  the  only  contrivance  ever  de 
vised  by  human  wit  to  check  scoundrelism  in  official 
place.  Nobody  who  is  carried  away  by  his  satire  on 
the  delays  in  Chancery  stops  to  think  that  the  Court 
of  Chancery,  with  all  its  abuses,  means  equity  juris 
prudence  ;  and  that  equity  jurisprudence,  in  distinc 
tion  from  the  common  law,  is  one  of  the  few  things  in 
insular  England  in  which  the  principles  of  universal 
reason  and  universal  justice  have  been  fairly  applied. 
The  novel  of  "  Hard  Times  "  is  a  satire  on  political 
economy,  of  which  Dickens  knew  little,  and  the  lit 
tle  he  knew  offended  his  benevolent  feelings  ;  as  if 
the  law  of  gravitation  itself  did  not  frequently  offend 
benevolent  feeling !  Still,  Mr.  Gradgrind  will  for 
generations  prevent  a  large  number  of  amiable  people 
from  admitting  the  demonstrations  of  Adam  Smith 
and  Ricardo.  One  sometimes  feels,  in  reflecting  on 
the  immense  influence  exerted  by  Dickens  on  matters 
requiring,  for  their  adequate  treatment,  wide  knowl- 


330  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

edge  and  philosophic  largeness  of  mind,  that  it  is  a 
great  pity  he  did  not  receive  in  youth  a  systematic 
education,  which  would  have  given  him  the  austere 
mental  training  which,  with  all  his  genius,  he  so  evi 
dently  lacks.  We  are  occasionally  reminded,  in  read" 
ing  him,  of  Tony  Weller's  reply  to  Mr.  Pickwick's 
praise  of  the  intelligence  of  his  son  Sam.  u  Werry 
glad  to  hear  of  it,  sir,"  he  says.  "  I  took  a  great  deal 
o'  pains  in  his  eddication,  sir  ;  let  him  run  the  streets 
when  he  wos  werry  young,  sir,  and  shift  for  hisself. 
It's  the  only  way  to  make  a  boy  sharp,  sir."  Un 
doubtedly,  what  Dickens  picked  up  in  "  running  the 
streets  "  was  precious  to  literature.  Undoubtedly  he 
saw  much  that  legislators,  statesmen,  and  thinkers 
neglect.  But  it  would  have  been  better,  when  he  in 
vaded  their  province,  if  he  had  known  more  than  he 
did  of  the  subjects  that  occupied  their  activity.  The 
fatal  defect  of  his  judgment  was  that  he  could  not 
fairly  represent  any  system  of  administration  or  gov 
ernment,  of  philanthropy  or  theology,  which  worked 
what  he  considered  injustice  or  wrong  in  individual 
cases.  Now,  God  alone,  with  an  eternity  to  operate 
in,  can  deal  with  such  exceptional  cases.  Imperfect 
human  beings  can,  at  the  best,  only  frame  systems 
which  have  a  tendency  to  do  the  greatest  good  to 
the  greatest  number.  As  a  humorist,  Dickens  is  as 
tolerant  as  Nature  is ;  as  a  satirist  he  is,  in  spirit, 
almost  as  intolerant,  though  in  a  different  way,  as 
Carlyle  himself.  He  has  not  the  Shakspearian  toler 
ation,  —  the  toleration  which  comes  from  immense 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  331 

force  and  reach  and  fairness  of  inind,  as  well  as  from 
goodness  and  tenderness  of  heart. 

But,  waiving  these  considerations,  and  coming  down 
to  the  real  talent  of  Dickens  in  looking  at  these 
things  from  his  own  point  of  view,  we  have  a  crowd 
of  shadowy  characters  which  are  indisputably  inhab 
itants  of  Dickens-land.  There  is  the  whole  family  of 
the  Barnacles,  born  to  receive  salaries  and  shirk 
work,  preaching  and  living  the  gospel  of  "how  not 
to  do  it."  There  is  Lord  Lancaster  Stiltstalking, 
"  who  had  been  maintained  by  the  Circumlocution 
Office  for  many  years  as  a  representative  of  the 
Britannic  Majesty  abroad."  This  "  noble  Refriger 
ator  had  iced  several  European  courts  in  his  time, 
and  had  done  it  with  such  complete  success  that 
the  very  name  of  Englishman  yet  struck  cold  to  the 
stomachs  of  foreigners  who  had  the  distinguished 
honor  of  remembering  him,  at  the  distance  of  a 
quarter  of  a  century."  At  the  festive  board  he 
"  shaded  the  dinner,  cooled  the  wines,  chilled  the 
gravy,  and  blighted  the  vegetables." 

Then  there  is  the  class  of  professional  philanthro 
pists,  Mrs.  Jellyby,  Mrs.  Pardiggle,  and  Messrs.  Quale, 
Gusher,  and  Honeythunder,  caricatures  which  express 
one  of  the  most  persistent  of  Dickens' s  antipathies. 
Remember  poor  rueful  Mr.  Jellyby  adjuring  his  daugh 
ter  Caddy,  when  she  was  to  marry  young  Mr.  Turvey- 
drop,  not  to  have  a  "  mission."  Unless,  he  says,  you 
mean  with  all  your  heart  to  strive  to  make  a  home 
for  your  husband,  "  you  had  better  murder  him  than 


332  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

marry  him."  And  then,  recurring  to  the  disorders 
of  his  own  home,  owing  to  Mrs.  Jellyby's  absorption 
in  Borrioboola-Gha,  he  calls  his  neglected  children 
"  wild  Indians,"  and  declares  "  that  he  was  sensible 
the  best  thing  that  could  happen  to  them  was,  their 
being  all  tomahawked  together." 

Then  there  is  the  class  to  which  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Chadband  belongs,  —  impersonated  satires  on  clerical 
defects  and  bigotries,  which  some  clergymen  have 
been  so  injudicious  as  to  denounce  as  attacks  on  re 
ligion.  Mr.  Chadband  is  "  a  large  yellow  man,  with 
a  fat  smile,"  a  greasy  paw,  and  with  "  a  general  ap 
pearance  of  having  a  good  deal  of  train-oil  in  his 
system."  His  eloquence  consists  in  "  piling  verbose 
flights  of  stairs"  one  upon  another.  His  sermon  on 
what  he  calls  "  Terewth,"  elicited  by  the  boy  Jo  on 
his  appearance  in  Mr.  Snagsby's  house,  is  a  master 
piece  of  its  kind.  "  0  my  juvenile  friends,"  he  ex 
claims,  "  if  the  master  of  this  house  was  to  go  forth 
into  the  city  and  there  see  an  eel,  and  was  to  come 
back,  and  was  to  call  untoe  him  the  mistress  of  this 
house,  and  was  to  say, '  Sarah,  rejoice  with  me,  for 
I  have  seen  an  elephant ! '  would  that  be  Terewth  ? 
Or  put  it  that  the  unnatural  parents  of  this  slum 
bering  Heathen,  —  for  parents  he  had,  my  juvenile 
friends,  without  a  doubt,  —  after  casting  him  forth 
to  the  wolves  and  the  vultures  and  the  wild  dogs  and 
the  young  gazelles  and  the  serpents,  went  back  to 
their  dwellings  and  had  their  pipes,  and  their  pots, 
and  their  flutings,  and  their  dancings,  and  their  malt 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  333 

liquors,  and  their  butcher's  meat  and  poultry, — would 
that  be  Terewth  ?  " 

In  the  same  class  of  impersonated  sarcasms  we  must  ' 
rank  his  hits,  in  "  Martin  Chuzzlewit,"  on  our  Ameri 
can  declaimers,  swindlers,  and  charlatans.     They  are 
caricatures  —  but  then,  what  good  caricatures  !     Not 
to  speak  of  Mr.  Jefferson  Brick,  and  Colonel  Diver, 
of  the  "Rowdy  Journal,"  how  delightful   is    Elijah 
Pogram,  "  honorable  "  in  virtue  of  his  being  a  member 
of  Congress  !     The  Hon.  Elijah's  eulogy  on  the  rascal 
Chollop  must  remind  us  of  many  specimens  of  West 
ern  eloquence.    "  Our  fellow-countryman  is  a  model  of  j 
a  man,  quite  fresh  from  Natur's  mould!  "  said  Pogram, 
with  enthusiasm.  "  He  is  a  true-born  child  of  this  free 
hemisphere !     Verdant  as  the  mountains  of  our  coun^ 
try  ;  bright  and  flowing  as  our  Mineral  Licks  ;  unsp'iled 
by  withering  conventionalities  as  air  our  broad  and 
boundless  Perearers  !     Rough  he  may  be.     So  air  our 
Barrs.     Wild  he  may  be.     So  air  our  Buffalers.     But 
he  is  a  child  of  Natur's,  and  a  child  of  Freedom  ;  and 
his  boastful  answer  to  the  Despot  and  Tyrant  is,  that 
his  bright  home  is  in  the  settin'  sun ! "     This  is  per 
haps  only  a  heightened  representation  of  the  way  in 
which   some  of   our  politicians  make  the  American 
Eagle  scream  ! 

Now  the  difference  between  characters  like  these/ 
and  real  men  and  women,  is,  that  they  have  no  inter- 
nal  vitality  and  individuality.     In  short,  they  have  no 
souls.     Dickens's  force  of  imagination  is  such  that  he 
easily  succeeds  in  personifying  them ;   but  he  easily 


334  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

succeeds  also  in  personifying  streets,  buildings,  land 
scapes,  furniture, —  everything,  in  short,  he  touches. 
It  is  so  difficult,  in  this  brief  survey,  to  mention  even 
by  name  scores  of  the  true  characters  which  enliven 
his  books,  that  the  deduction  we  make  is  compara 
tively  of  slight  importance.  Among  those  characters 
who  have  essential  individuality,  Tony  Weller  and 
Mrs.  Gamp  stand  out  as  perhaps  the  best  examples  of 
solid  characterization  in  Dickens's  works.  What  they 
say  is  deliciously  humorous,  but  what  they  are  is  more 
humorous  still.  The  same,  to  a  less  extent,  may  be 
said  of  Sam  Weller,  Squeers,  Wilkins  Micawber,  Es 
quire,  Captain  Ed'ard  Cuttle,  Mr.  Crummies,  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Boffin ;  of  the  wonderful  series  of  boys,  from 
Master  Wackford  Squeers  all  the  way  up  to  the  "  baby- 
devil  "  Deputy,  in  "  Edwin  Drood,"  and  that  perfection 
of  urchin  impudence,  Bailey,  Junior,  in  "  Martin  Chuz- 
zlewit ; "  of  the  dilapidated  young  gentlemen,  distin 
guished  for  their  flow  of  spirits,  animal  and  alcoholic, 
represented  by  Bob  Sawyer,  Mr.  Chuck ster,  and  Mr. 
Richard  Swiveller  ;  and  of  oddities  and  "  originals  "  of 
all  kinds,  such  as  Newman  Noggs,  Tim  Linkinwater, 
Mr.  Cruncher,  Durdles,  Mr.  Venus,  Mr.  Wegg,  Mr. 
Boythorne.  It  is  useless  in  such  an  embarrassment  of 
riches  to  attempt  specification.  They  are  all  more  or 
less  overcharged,  as  though  the  author  was  a  little  in 
toxicated  with  his  own  humorous  conceptions,  and 
could  not  keep  himself  within  any  measure  ;  but  they 
are  still  all  alive.  Of  the  novels  in  which  they  appear, 
"  The  Pickwick  Papers  "  are  the  most  animated  and 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  335 

joyous,  inspired,  as  they  are,  by  the  very  genius  of 
fun ;  "  David  Copperfield  "  is  the  most  delightful,  vari 
ous,  and  satisfying  of  stories;  "Dombey  and  Son"  is 
the  freshest  and  most  vital  throughout  in  style,  de 
scription,  and  characterization ;  and  "  The  Tale  of 
Two  Cities  "  is  the  most  intense,  passionate,  and  "  en 
training  "  of  narratives. 

In  all  the  novels,  the  characters  can  hardly  be  de 
tached  from  the  scenes  and  incidents  in  which  they 
appear,  without  a  loss  in  ludicrous  effect.  Still,  let 
me  quote  a  few  sentences  in  which  what  they  are, 
flashes  through  what  they  my.  Mr.  Sam  Weller,  on 
first  encountering  the  fat  boy,  accosts  him  with  the 
question,  "You  a'n't  got  nothing  on  your  mind  as 
makes  you  fret  yourself,  have  you  ?"  "  Not  as  I  knows 
on,"  replies  the  boy.  "  I  should  rather  ha'  thought," 
says  Sam,  "  to  look  at  you,  that  you  was  a-laborin' 
under  an  unrequited  attachment  to  some  young 
'ooman." 

Mrs.  Todgers  fears  that  "  that  dreadful  child,"  Bai 
ley,  Junior,  has  been  so  spoilt  by  the  gentlemen  of 
her  boarding-house,  "  that  nothing  but  hanging  will 
ever  do  him  any  good."  Mrs.  Gamp  gives,  as  her 
opinion,  that  "  there  's  nothin'  he  don't  know.  All  the 
wickedness  of  the  world  is  Print  to  him."  "Recther 
so,"  retorts  Bailey,  Junior,  "adjusting  his  cravat." 
And  then  he  confesses  critically  to  Poll  Sweedlepipe, 
"  There  's  the  remains  of  a  fine  woman  about  Sairy, 
—  hey,  Poll!"  uDrat  the  Bragian  boldness  of  that 
boy!"  cried  Mrs.  Gamp.  "  I  would  n't  be  that  cree- 


336  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

tur's  mother,  not  for  fifty  pound ! "  "  Excuge,"  she 
says,  in  reference  to  this  same  Poll  Sweedlepipe,  the 
barber,  "  excuge  the  weakness  of  the  man  .  .  .  which 
not  a  blessed  hour  ago  he  nearly  shaved  the  noge  off 
from  the  father  of  as  lovely  a  family  as  ever,  Mr. 
Chuzzlewit,  was  born  three  sets  of  twins ;  and  would 
have  done  it,  only  he  see  it  a-goin'  in  the  glass  and 
dodged  the  rager !  " 

Mr.  Sapsea,  in  "  Edwin  Drood,"  thus  discriminates 
between  equity  and  legality.  "  It  is  not  enough,"  he 
says,  "  that  Justice  should  be  morally  certain ;  she 
must  be  immorally  certain  —  legally,  that  is." 

Mr.  Micawber,  who  is  the  prey  of  pecuniary  difficul 
ties,  and  who  is  always  waiting  for  something  to 
"  turn  up,"  has  a  family  in  every  way  worthy  of  him. 
"  My  mamma,"  said  Mrs.  Micawber, "  departed  this  life 
before  Mr.  Micawber's  difficulties  commenced,  or  at 
least  before  they  became  pressing.  My  papa  lived 
to  bail  Mr.  Micawber  several  times,  and  then  expired, 
regretted  by  a  numerous  circle."  "  My  piece  of  advice 
to  you,  Copperfield,"  says  Mr.  Micawber,  u  you  know. 
Annual  income,  twenty  pounds ;  annual  expenditure, 
nineteen  nineteen  six  ;  result,  happiness.  Annual  in 
come,  twenty  pounds ;  annual  expenditure,  twenty 
pounds  aught  and  six  ;  result,  misery.  The  blossum 
is  blighted,  the  leaf  is  withered,  the  God  of  day  goes 
down  on  the  dreary  scene,  and — and,  in  short,  you 
are  forever  floored.  As  I  am ! " 

How  many  so-called  accomplished  women  of  the 
world  are  hit  in  this  picture  of  Mrs.  Merdle !  She 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  337 

"  had  large,  unfeeling,  handsome  eyes,  and  dark,  un 
feeling,  handsome  hair,  and  a  broad,  unfeeling,  hand 
some  bosom." 

"  I  am,"  says  Mr.  Vincent  Crummies, "  in  the  theat 
rical  profession  myself ;  my  wife  is  in  the  theatrical 
profession ;  I  had  a  dog  that  lived  and  died  in  it  from 
a  puppy  ;  and  my  chaise-pony  goes  on,  in  *  Timour 
the  Tartar.'" 

When  Mrs.  Crupp,  David  Copperfield's  landlady, 
has  her  house  invaded  by  Miss  Betsey  Trotwood,  she 
vehemently  expresses  her  determination  to  assert  her 
rights  before  "  a  British  Judy."  Mr.  Wegg,  when  he 
charges  Mr.  Boffin  more  for  reading  poetry  to  him 
than  for  reading  prose,  justifies  the  exaction  on  the 
ground  that,  when  "  a  person  comes  to  grind  off  poetry 
night  after  night,  it  is  but  right  he  should  expect 
to  be  paid  for  its  weakening  effect  on  his  mind." 
When  Mr.  Squeers  is  drunk,  he  goes  to  bed  not  only 
with  his  boots  on,  but  with  his  umbrella  under  his 
arm.  When  Arthur  Clenman,  ruined  by  speculation 
and  utterly  crushed  in  spirit,  says  to  Mr.  Rugg,  his 
attorney,  that  he  cares  only  for  the  money  left  with 
him  in  trust,  and  not  for  his  own,  Mr.  Rugg  ex 
presses  an  unmistakable  professional  surprise  at  such 
extraordinary  delicacy  of  feeling.  "I  have,"  he 
says  "generally  found  in  my  experience,  that  it's 
their  own  money  people  are  most  particular  about. 
I  have  seen  people  get  rid  of  a  good  deal  of  other 
people's  money,  and  bear  it  very  well;  very  well 
indeed." 


338  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

A  word  may  be  said  here  in  regard  to  the  critical 
charge  against  Dickens,  that  he  preserves  the  individ 
uality  of  his  characters  by  the  cheap  contrivance  of 
constantly  repeating  some  mere  external  peculiarity. 
Mr.  Snagsby  always  prefaces  anything  he  has  to  say 
with  a  slight  deprecatory  cough  behind  his  raised 
hand.  Uriah  Heep  is  always  "  'umble."  Mr.  Jarn- 
dyce's  "  East  Wind  "  becomes  in  the  end  painfully 
monotonous.  Mr.  Tony  Weller's  fear  of  the  machina 
tions  of  "  widdurs  "  tires  at  last  on  the  critical  sense 
of  humor.  Mrs.  Merdle's  "  Bosom  "  is  so  obtrusively 
prominent  that  it  submerges  Mrs.  Merdle  herself  in  a 
physical  trait.  The  objection  is  just,  but  still  the  de 
fect  belongs  to  Dickens's  method  of  characterization. 
He  repeats  these  things  as  the  experienced  preacher 
constantly  repeats  his  text,  in  order  to  deepen  its 
effect  on  the  popular  mind.  As  long  as  Dickens 
makes  his  characters  really  alive,  in  internal  indi 
viduality  as  well  as  in  external  peculiarity,  the  defect 
»  is  but  superficial. 

The  villains  in  Dickens's  novels  are  not  favorable 
specimens  of  the  class  from  which  Shakspeare  and 
Scott  drew  some  of  their  grandest  creations.  All  his 
villains  are  essentially  low  villains  and  utter  villains ; 
but  experience,  history,  and  Shakspeare  prove  that 
villains  are  commonly  the  most  complicated  of  all 
characters,  and  require  the  greatest  subtlety  and 
depth  of  dramatic  insight  to  be  adequately  represented 
and  explained.  Dickens's  villains,  Quilp,  Carker, 
Arthur  Gride,  Jonas  Chuzzlewit,  Ralph  Nickleby, 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  339 

Blandois,  and  the  rest,  are  simply  hideous,  and  belong 
not  to  literature,  but  to  the  criminal  courts.  Though 
he  devotes  to  them  much  of  his  strongest,  most  elab 
orate,  and  most  ambitious  writing,  he  never  succeeds 
in  making  them  artistically  justifiable.  Total  de 
pravity  is  not  admissible  in  romance  ;  and  Dickens 
professes  to  draw  his  villains  as  totally  depraved. 
"  What,"  he  says  in  "Edwin  Drood,"  — the  last  work 
he  wrote,  — "  could  a  virtuous  mind  know  of  the 
criminal  intellect,  which  its  own  professed  students 
perpetually  misread,  because  they  persist  in  trying  to 
reconcile  it  with  the  average  intellect  of  average  men, 
instead  of  identifying  it  as  a  horrible  wonder  apart  ?  " 
And  as  to  the  criminal  heart  under  this  criminal  in 
tellect,  he  has  expressed  a  sufficiently  despairing 
opinion  through  the  lips  of  the  honest  landlady  who 
denounces  Blandois,  the  leading  villain  of  "  Little 
Dorrit."  "  I  know  nothing,"  she  says,  "  of  philo 
sophic  philanthropy.  But  this  I  know,  that  there 
are  people  whom  it  is  necessary  to  detest  without 
compromise.  There  are  people  who  must  be  dealt 
with  as  enemies  of  the  human  race.  There  are  peo 
ple  (men  and  women  both,  unfortunately)  who  have 
no  good  in  them  —  none.  There  are  people  who  have 
no  human  heart,  and  must  be  crushed  like  savage 
beasts  and  cleared  out  of  the  way." 

Individually  I  may  agree  with  this  judgment,  and 
think  that  the  hangman  is  doing  the  most  useful  of 
all  works  in  launching  such  existences  into  non- 
existence.  Kill  them  by  all  means,  but  don't  do  what 


340  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

Dickens  does,  —  don't  make  them  prominent  charac- 
(  ters  in  the  ideal  realm  of  tragedy  and  romance. 
There  is  a  soured  and  cruelly  deceived  gentle 
man  in  this  place,  who  refused  the  other  day 
to  subscribe  to  any  domestic  or  foreign  missions, 
because,  he  said,  there  were  not,  in  his  deliberate 
opinion,  as  many  persons  that  went  to  hell  as  ought 
to  go  there.  Whatever  we  may  think  of  this  judg 
ment,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  people  he 
indicated  in  his  anathema  ought  not  to  trouble  us 
in  a  romance  written  by  a  man  of  genius.  Dickens, 
in  his  novels,  continually  thrusts  them  in  our  eyes. 
Consequently,  in  this  department  of  his  art  he  is 
manifestly  wrong.  Shakspcare  and  Scott  bring  in 
their  villains  artistically,  exhibiting  the  clash  and 
conflict  of  their  consciences  with  their  passions ; 
Dickens  sticks  to  the  vulgar,  melodramatic  villain, 
without  conscience,  and  satisfies  our  moral  senti 
ments  at  the  expense  of  disgusting  our  sense  of 
;  artistic  propriety. 

The  pathos  of  Dickens  is  no  less  effective  than 
his  humor ;  perhaps  he  draws  tears  even  more  easily 
than  he  provokes  laughter.  He  makes  everybody 
cry,  —  even  his  hostile  critics  ;  but  his  critics  object 
that  they  are  made  to  cry  against  the  rules;  that 
it  is  sentimentality  they  cry  over,  and  not  true  senti 
ment  ;  that  it  is  exceedingly  unnatural  thus  to  have 
their  natures  so  deeply  stirred.  Dickens  took  their 
tears  as  the  most  cogent  of  all  answers  to  their 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  341 

maxims,  and  went  on  with  his  work,  forcing  them 
to  weep,  and  disregarding  the  snarling  protest  they 
made  against  the  magician  who  extorted  from  them 
such  irrepressible  drops  of  uncritical  emotion.  Still, 
the  critics  were  not  altogether  wrong  in  saying  that 
while  his  humor  always  cheered,  his  pathos  fre 
quently  enfeebled.  Vigorous  manly  and  womanly 
will  to  do  practical  benevolent  work  is  apt  to  be 
dissolved  in  such  tears  as  Dickens  makes  us  some 
times  shed.  It  is  well  to  sympathize  with  sorrow; 
but  to  sympathize  with  it  to  such  an  extent  as  to 
make  strong-heartedness  give  way  to  soft-heartedness 
is  to  deprive  us  of  the  power  to  help  the  sorrowful. 
For  example,  we  all  perhaps  become  somewhat  maud 
lin  over  Little  Nell ;  but  then,  Little  Nell  grown  up 
in  "  Little  Dorrit ; "  grown  up  in  Lucie  Manette,  of 
"The  Tale  of  Two  Cities;"  grown  up  in  Esther 
Summerson,  of  the  "  Bleak  House,"  —  is  a  veritable 
character,  competent,  through  pathetic  sentiment,  to 
impress  us  with  the  highest  obligations  of  duty. 
The  affectionateness  and  self-devotion  of  these  char 
acters  are  all  steeped  in  an  atmosphere  of  moral 
beauty.  I  think  that  Esther  Summerson  is  the  most 
perfect  character  of  its  kind  in  romantic  literature, 
thoroughly  pure,  sweet,  kindly,  maidenly,  and  hu 
mane.  Mr.  Peggotty  again,  in  "  David  Copperlield," 
is  a  wonderful  example  of  the  power  of  goodness  to 
irradiate  the  homeliest  form,  and  lift  into  grandeur 
the  most  uncouth  expression.  Human  nature  itself 
is  indebted  to  Dickens  for  such  delineations  of  its 


342  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

possibilities  of  purity,  tenderness,  and  humble  moral 
strength. 

There  is  quite  a  crowd  of  such  characters  in 
Dickens-land,  and  they  thoroughly  Christianize  it. 
What  a  discourse  on  filial  duty  is  condensed  in  the 
advice  given  by  Mr.  George,  in  "  Bleak  House,"  to 
young  Woolwich  !  "  The  time  will  come  when  this 
hair  of  your  mother's  will  be  gray,  and  this  forehead 
all  crossed  and  recrossed  with  wrinkles.  Take  care, 
while  you  are  young,  that  you  can  think  in  those 
days,  ' 1  never  whitened  a  hair  of  her  dear  head,  I 
never  marked  a  sorrowful  line  in  her  face ! ' : 

What  a  living  sermon  is  that  preached  at  the  death 
bed  of  little  Paul  Dombey !  How  it  melts,  human 
izes,  elevates  every  heart !  "  Sister  and  brother 
wound  their  arms  around  each  other,  and  the  golden 
light  came  streaming  in,  and  fell  upon  them,  locked 
together.  .  .  .  He  put  his  hands  together,  as  he  had 
been  used  to  do  at  prayers.  He  did  not  remove  his 
arms  to  do  it ;  but  they  saw  him  fold  them  so,  behind 
her  neck.  i  Mama  is  like  you,  Floy.  I  know  her  by 
the  face.  But  tell  them  that  the  print  upon  the 
stairs  at  school  is  not  divine  enough.  The  light 
about  the  head  is  shining  on  me  as  I  go!'  The 
golden  ripple  on  the  wall  came  back  again,  and 
nothing  else  stirred  in  the  room.  The  old,  old  fash 
ion!  The  fashion  that  came  in  with  our  first  gar 
ments,  and  will  last  unchanged  until  our  race  has 
run  its  course,  and  the  wide  firmament  is  rolled  up 
like  a  scroll.  The  old,  old  fashion  —  Death.  Oh, 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  343 

thank  God,  all  who  see  it,  for  that  older  fashion  yet, 
of  Immortality  !  And  look  upon  us,  angels  of  young 
children,  with  regards  not  quite  estranged,  when  the 
swift  river  bears  us  to  the  ocean  ! " 

And  what  a  wild,  agonized  cry  is  that  which  bursts 
from  the  heart  of  David  Copperfield  as  he  surveys 
for  the  last  time  his  friend  tranquilly  sleeping,  and 
thinks  of  the  inexpiable  crime  he  so  soon  after 
committed. 

"  Never  more  —  Oh,  God  forgive  you,  Steerforth  !  — 
to  touch  that  passive  hand  in  love  and  friendship. 
Never,  never  more  !  " 

And  then  there  is  the  death  of  Davy  Copperfield's 
mother,  as  told  to  him  by  his  old  nurse,  Peggotty. 
"  '  Peggotty,  my  dear, '  she  said, '  put  me  nearer  to  you,' 
for  she  was  very  weak.  (  Lay  your  good  arm  under 
my  neck,'  she  said, '  and  turn  me  to  you,  for  your  face 
is  going  far  off,  and  I  want  it  to  be  near.'  I  put  it  as 
she  asked ;  and  oh,  Davy  !  the  time  came  when  my 
first  parting  words  to  you  were  true  —  when  she  was 
glad  to  lay  her  poor  head  on  her  stupid  cross  old 
Peggotty's  arm  —  and  she  died  like  a  child  that  had 
gone  to  sleep." 

And  then  there  is  in  "  Bleak  House  "  that  wonder 
fully  depicted  ride  which  Esther  Summerson  takes  with 
Mr.  Bucket,  the  detective,  to  follow  and  save  her 
mother,  Lady  Dedlock,  who  had  fled  from  her  haughty 
husband's  house  to  die  at  the  gate  of  the  paupers' 
cemetery,  where  her  early  love,  Esther's  wild  father, 
was  buried.  "  She  lay  there,  with  one  arm  creeping 


344  IN  DICKENS-LAND. 

round  a  bar  of  the  iron  gate,  and  seeming  to  em 
brace  it.  She  lay  there,  a  distressed,  unsheltered, 
senseless  creature."  Esther  does  not  think  it  is  her 
mother,  but  her  attendant,  Jenny.  "  I  saw,"  she 
says,  "  but  did  not  comprehend,  the  solemn  and  com 
passionate  look  in  Mr.  Woodcourt's  face.  I  saw,  but 
did  not  comprehend,  his  touching  the  other  on  the 
breast,  to  keep  him  back.  I  saw  him  stand  uncov 
ered  in  the  bitter  air,  with  a  reverence  for  something. 
But  my  understanding  for  all  this  was  gone.  I  even 
heard  it  said  between  them, c  Shall  she  go  ? '  '  She  had 
better  go.  Her  hands  should  be  the  first  to  touch  her. 
They  have  a  higher  right  than  ours.'  I  passed  on  to 
the  gate,  and  stooped  down.  I  lifted  the  heavy  head, 
put  the  long  dank  hair  aside,  and  turned  the  face. 
And  it  was  my  mother,  cold  and  dead." 

This  is  essential  pathos,  going  down  to  the  very 
roots  of  the  thing  in  the  human  heart.  And  how 
numerous  the  examples  are,  spread  all  over  Dickens's 
works ! 

And  now,  in  conclusion,  let  us  celebrate,  without 
any  qualification,  this  humane  man  of  genius,  who, 
whether  he  makes  us  laugh  or  weep,  makes  us  better ; 
who  cheers  us  with  a  fresh  confidence  in  human  nature, 
and  with  an  intenser  sympathy  for  the  poor,  the  de 
spised  and  the  wretched  ;  who  has  done  immense  good 
while  he  has  seemed  only  to  diffuse  vast  entertainment ; 
who  has  peopled  the  imagination  with  a  new  company 
of  ideal  beings  which  the  heart  clings  to  and  will  not 


IN  DICKENS-LAND.  345 

allow  to  die ;  who  never  did  or  said  anything  mean 
or  base,  or  refrained  from  stigmatizing  meanness  and 
baseness  when  they  crossed  his  path  ;  who  was  never 
corrupted  by  success,  but  was  as  kindly  and  genial 
in  life  as  in  his  writings ;  who  tried  sincerely  to  live 
in  accordance  with  what  he  honestly  believed  to  be 
true  and  right ;  and  who,  while  he  will  ever  hold  a 
high  rank  among  the  great  novelists  of  the  world, 
will  also,  and  through  his  novels,  hold  a  still  more 
precious  position  among  the  great  benefactors  of  the 
human  race. 


University  Press :  John  Wilson  &  Son,  Cambridge. 


14  DAY  USE 

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